V r ' 








PAPERS 



FROM OVER THE WATER; 



A SERIES OF 



LETTERS FROM EUROPE, 



BY 



SINCLAIR TOUSEY. 



>v 






— o— 








FRANCE, 




SWITZERLAND, 




GERMANY, 




HOLLAND, 






BELGIUM, 




SPAIN, 






ITALY, 




BAVARIA, 






ENGLAND, 


IRELAND. 


SCOTLAND, 



NEW-YORK: 
THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY. 

1869. 






Entered, according -to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY. 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 
District of New- York. 






S. W. GREEN, 

PRINTER, 

16 and 18 Jacob Street, New- York. 



SALEM H. WALES, 



WHOSE AGREEABLE COMPANIONSHIP, DURING MORE THAN A HALF-YEAR, AS A FELLOW- 
TRAVELLER, CONTRIBUTED GREATLY TO THE PLEASURE OF THE TOUR 
PARTIALLY DESCRIBED HEREIN, THIS BOOK IS 

akespectfullg HeWcatcTi 

BY THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE 



When about leaving home to visit the Old World, friends 
asked me to write descriptions of what I might see. 

A compliance with their requests would have required more 
time than I could devote thereto ; but, instead of writing to each 
person, I sent my letters to the newspapers for publication, and 
thus gave friends what they asked for. 

On their appearance in print, they were copied to some 
extent, and seemed to meet some little public appreciation. 
This, coupled with requests for their publication in book form, 
induced me to submit them in this shape. 

They are not offered as possessing any literary merit whatever, 
a life of toil in business pursuits having effectually prevented 
my acquiring any such qualifications ; neither are they given as 
containing any thing new concerning the countries visited ; no 
pretensions are made to having seen more than all travelers 
can see who will look as they travel. 

I have simply endeavored to describe what I saw, as in- 
telligently as I could. If I have ministered to the reader's 
amusement, or increased his stock of information even in a 
slight degree, I shall be satisfied. 

S. T. 






CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

Brest — Lost Luggage — French Railway — Saturday Weddings — Illuminated Foun- 
tain at Versailles^Great Dinner — Sunday Shops, etc 7 

II. 

A Lieutenant-Governor in a fix— Women at Work— Calvin's Church— How Pigs 
go to Market— Rothschild's House— Geneva — A Dutch Traveler— Clothes- 
Washing— Swiss Steamers— Intelligent Englishman— Swiss Peasants — Mont 
Blanc, etc 15 



III. 

A Bear Story — Hoisting Stone — A Saving People — Bluebeard's Castle — Over the 
Mountains — Beautiful Sight — Sunday — Swiss Cottages — Baden-Baden and its 
Gamblers 23 



IV. 

A Big Wine-Cask— Frankfort and the Jews— Wiesbaden— Wine — Great Church 
— Down the Rhine — Crowning a Yankee — Aix-la-Chapelle — Among the 
Dutch— A Yearly Visitor— Women towing Canal -Boats, etc 29 

V. 

Rotterdam— Breakfast Smokers— Hauling Brick — Antwerp— Blanketed Cattle in 
the Field — Cow-Milking — Brussels — Indignant Peddler — Paris — Queer Sign 
near a Cemetery — Public Respect to Passing Funerals — Lafayette's Grave — 
Elevated Hencoop — Brick-Raising, etc. ... 36 



VI. 

A Prison— Wine City— Stilts— A Shell Cradle— Bayonne — Biarritz— Rude Farm- 
ing— Ragged Soldiers— Vittoria and its Odors— Bnrgos and its Cathedral— A 



viii Contents. 

PAGE 

Cure for the Headache — Beautiful Monuments — An old Monastery — Aristo- 
cratic Convent — A Kingly Chair — Columbus — Cervantes — Sundry Images — 
Valladolid— Church Fronts, etc 4" 

VII. 

A Poor Country— A Jew's Vow and what came of it— Great Pictures— Bull Pens- 
Old Armor — Devotees 1 Offerings — Costly Robes — A Granite Building — Baby- 
House, etc 52 

VIII. 
Sunday Sport— A Bull-Fight 61 

IX. 

Toledo, its Narrow Streets and Great Church— A Stone made Hollow by Kissing 
— Costly Robes — Cordova and its Mosque — Church of a Thousand Columns 
— Bull's Head — Bridles without Bits — How Spaniards warm their Rooms — 
Olive Orchards — Seville, its Beggars — Moorish Gardens — Narrow Streets — 
Wonderful Cathedral— Pig Dressing— Cure for Sore Eyes, etc 69 



Seville to Granada via Malaga — Orange, Fig, and Palm Trees — Beggars — A 
Cemetery — Impudent People — Raisin Girls — A Stage Ride — Cruel Drivers — 
Armed Guards — Peculiar Scenery — Wine-Shop Sign— Archbishop, etc So 

XI. 

Granada — Moorish Buildings — Convicts in the Alhambra Grounds — Gypsies — 
Poor Old Monk— A Painted Cross— Sectarian Pictures— A Child's Funeral 
— Valencia Bull-Ring and Bankers— Barcelona— A Moor's Head in a Church 
— Farewell to Spain, etc 89 

XII. 

Turkeys— A Kingly Sentinel— Salt— Wine— Brandy— Yoked Horses— Old Temple 
and Amphitheatre at Nimes— Large Pigs — Cheerful Workers— An Old Aque- 
duct—Avignon, France— Stony Plain— Long Railway Tunnel— Marseilles — 
Costly Cafe— Scene at Railway Station— Nice and its Contrasts, etc 101 

XIII. 

Along the Mediterranean from Nice to Genoa— Sea-shore Towns— Great Moun- 
tains—Terraced Vineyards— Pigskin Wine-Casks— A Sailor's Skill and its 
Reward— Birthplace of Columbus— A Little Cart and Little Team— Genoa : 
Its Porters, Veiled Women, Fine Palaces, Crooked Streets— Paganhu's Fiddle 
— Paper Currency— Matrimonial Notices, etc., etc., etc 108 



Contents, ix 



PAGE 
XIV. 



Genoa to Spezzia— Beautiful Scenery — Sun and Storms on the Sea — Basket- 
shaped Tree-Tops for Grape- Vines — Frescoed Houses — A Spring in the Sea 
— Tower of Pisa — A Cemetery with Frescoed Corridors — Angel and Devil in 
a Fight— Horse and Cart Gearings— Baptistery, etc., etc., etc 117 

XV. 
Pictures — Sculpture — Warming- Pans — Parliamentary Bells— Cats — Churches — 
Mosaics— Bridges— Trotting-Buggy— Mule's Shoes— A Good Society— Street 

Cleaning, etc 128 

XVI. 
Florence to Naples— Things in Naples— Sibyl's Cave— Vesuvius— Hot Lava- 
Queer Teams — Droll Vehicles — Pompeii — Horse-shoeing — Letter-Writers — 
Poor Priests — Money-Changers — Crust of Extinct Volcano — Underground 
Road — Orange Groves and Singing Birds — Lamplight Burials — Night Scenes, 

etc 138 

XVII. 
Rome and its Wonders — The Colosseum — Churches — Students — Priests — Bish- 
ops — Bones — Worshiping — Church of St. Peter — Statue of St. Peter — 
Ruins— Springs of Water 150 

XVIII. 

A Good Rule — Sunday Labor — Leghorn — Lucca — Pistoia — Bologna — Its Campo 
Santo — Old Schools and Female Professors — Venice — Its Canals — Bridges — 
Gondolas — Churches — Pigeons — Carnival — Square of St. Mark — Lotteries — 
Water-Carriers, etc. — A Dangerous Key — Plains of Lombardy — Railway 
Station — Milan — Its Great Cathedral — Da Vinci's Last Supper, etc., etc 159 

XIX. 

From Milan via the Brenner Pass, Munich, Strasburg, etc., to Paris — Powdered 
Heads and Faces — Stately Policemen — Verona — Juliet's House and Tomb — 
Old Amphitheatre — Botzen — Innsbruck — Railway Scenery — Munich — Beer — 
Dead-House — Finger-Rings, Wires, Alarm Bells for the Dead — Railway 

Tickets— Storks' Nests, etc., etc., etc 173 

XX. 

Sewers of Paris — Babies and Nurses — Bologne — Bank Bills for Waste Paper — A 
Small Bill for a Large Sum — Ballet-Dancers — Heads — Royal Consumers — 
Asses' Milk — Beef Raw and Roasted — Fish, etc., etc 180 

XXI. 

England— Scotland— Ireland— Leamington — Stratford— Chatsworth— Sheffield- 
Edinburgh — Glasgow — Liverpool — Dublin — Killarney — Colorless-faced poor 

people, etc., etc 187 

XXII. 

Scraps— Comparisons 193 



Papers from over the Water. 



Brest — Lost Luggage — French Railway — Saturday Weddings 
— Illuminated Fountain at Versailles — Great Dinner — 
Sunday Shops, etc. 

Paris, September, 1867. 

I left our busy city on Saturday, the 10th of August, to 
make my first visit to the Old World. 

As the good steamer St. Laurent moved gracefully down 
our magnificent bay, and passed out on to the broad Atlan- 
tic, I began to realize for the first time that I was leaving 
home. 

ARRIVAL AT BREST. 

In due time we dropped anchor at Brest, about midnight, 
and after an hour's display of fireworks and discharging of 
cannon, we succeeded in waking up a little steam-tug, and 
bringing her off to the steamer for mails, passengers, and lug- 
gage. Having passed the custom-house, we drove up a 
winding road to the railway. After unloading and sorting 
the luggage, finding part of mine missing, I commenced a 
chase after it, but in vain. 

Daylight finally came, and nearly all our passengers left 



8 Papers from over the Water. 

the depot in stages to go up to the town — a walled one — for 
breakfast, leaving me in pursuit of my loss. However, I did 
not waste much time after their departure, but followed on 
foot. After traveling about a quarter of a mile, I entered 
a public square surrounded by queer old buildings, among 
and past which there ran a paved street; down it were 
passing hundreds and hundreds of men and boys, in wooden 
shoes, on their way into the walled city to their work. 

LOOKING FOR A HOTEL. 

I inquired of at least a dozen of them as to the location 
of a certain hotel ; but they did not understand a word I 
said, and I was so stupid as not to know what they said ; and 
there I was, in a great crowd of wooden-shod people, not 
knowing which way to go, hungry as a grizzly in winter, the 
time drawing near for the departure of the train, every man 
and boy and woman, of course, staring at me with wonder. 
Finally, two little, light-haired, blue-eyed boys, with wooden 
shoes, came stamping along over the pavement, who eyed 
me so closely that I ventured to ask them for my hotel, 
when lo and behold ! they marched me directly to it. There 
I found my companions eating their breakfast as quietly as 
though I were with them. 

I did not find my baggage before the train left for Paris, 
seventeen hours away ; but on I went to the great city, per- 
fectly confident that I should eventually get, it, notwithstand- 
ing I had no check for it, nor any thing by which I could 
hold any person responsible. 

On arriving in Paris, I went to the depot, and called on 
Monsieur of the baggage bureau, (all bureaus in France, no 
offices.) He referred me to Mr. B., and he to Mr. C, and 
he to Mr. D. ; each Mr., in every instance, going with me to 
the person referred to, and each one bowing and tipping 



Things in Paris. 9 

his hat, as if they had not met for weeks j and, finally, we 
all went to Mr. E., who said that I should have my baggage 
in three days, and in three days I found it in my room. 

FRENCH RAIL WA Y. 

The railway from Brest to Paris, though only a branch 
road for a part of the distance, is a model for durability of 
track, solidity of road-bed, ease of the cars, and freedom 
from jolting and vibration. At every highway crossing 
gates are placed to protect travelers from the passing train. 
No one is allowed on the track or road-bed anywhere. 
The signal guards are women in uniform. The passengers' 
depots at way-stations are all fenced in, and none but pas- 
sengers are allowed inside. Spectators are kept outside. 
All the way-stations have beautiful little flower-gardens 
around them, and look as neat as labor and taste can make 
them. The locomotives are not such big fellows as ours, 
and many of them have no roof over the driver, or as we 
say, engineer, who stands perfectly exposed to the weather, 
without even a window to protect his eyes from the wind 
caused by the rushing train. 

Every person employed on a railway or about a depot, 
and, in fact, in any public capacity, wears some sort of 
uniform, or badge, to designate his business — a plan that we 
might adopt with advantage ; but the blood of the American 
eagle would not submit to the degradation of being badger- 
ed, and so we can not tell who is who about a depot or any- 
where else. We shall be wiser when we are older. 

THINGS IN PARIS. 

I have seen but little of Paris as yet ; but what I have 
seen induces me to believe that it is "a right smart-sized 



io Papers from over the Water. 

place," quite a village. The shop- windows are marvelous in 
number, in the beauty of their goods, in the taste displayed 
in the arrangement thereof, and in the immensity of the 
value shown ; but the interior arrangements of the shops are 
not equal to ours in New- York. The female shop-keepers 
are models of politeness and neatness of dress, and the 
crowds of people gazing at the windows are wonderful in 
number and propriety of conduct. I have not seen a street 
row or brawl of any kind, or a drunken person ; even the 
hackmen are quite civil and well behaved. The streets are 
well paved, free from dust, and as none (that I have seen) 
are paved with that curse of horse and rider, cobble-stone, 
they are easy to ride over — in fact, quite as pleasant, a great 
share of them, as the roads in our Central Park. 

WEDDING-DA Y. 

On my way on a Saturday to deliver a copy of Greeley's 
American Conflict to the tutor of a young gentleman of 
New- York, now at school here, whose father had sent it by 
me, I dropped into one of the churches, and within ten mi- 
nutes saw four wedding parties enter. 

Saturday, I am told, is a popular wedding-day with the 
middle classes, many couples of whom, after leaving church, 
spend the day at the Bois de Boulogne, (a great park,) which, 
judging from the number of wedding groups I saw there on 
the same afternoon, must be a favorite resort on such occa- 
sions ; indeed, it is said the people consider it indicative of 
good luck to spend the wedding-day under the green trees, 
as much so, I suppose, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe does to 
throw old shoes after a departing newly married niece. 

It must be a curious knowledge, that of the world's super- 
stitions. Who knows them ? 



Search for Dinner. 1 1 

On a Sunday, I joined a party of New-Yorkers on a trip 
to Versailles, the magnificent memento of the reckless ex- 
travagance of the Fourteenth Louis ; an extravagance that 
some say was the germ of the great Revolution ; but of this 
historians know much more than I do. We selected that 
day because the last display of fireworks and illumination of 
the fountains was to take place in the evening. We arrived 
there about one o'clock p.m., by rail, and fell into the throng of 
people, among them hundreds of priests, whom these dis- 
plays always attract to Versailles, and were swept along like 
so many mere atoms, through the picture galleries of the 
old palace, through the dead monarch's grand apartments 
and saloons, where in the old time the noblest and gayest 
of France displayed their charms, and plotted and counter- 
plotted each other's ruin. 

SEARCH FOR DINNER. 

After some hours of this " moving on," (for no stopping 
was allowed, the crowd being so great,) we sallied out of the 
palace, out of the garden, and began a grand chase after a 
dinner; but the chasing was much easier than the finding, 
as every restaurant was full, and more than full, of hungry 
people. 

We could find plenty to drink — the French people seem to 
live on drink — but little to eat ; however, by great industry 
and much perspiration, we found two small tables and sev- 
eral smaller stools in a dark room, all of which we seized on 
vi et armis, and one of our party — a live New-Yorker, for 
many years a Nassau Streeter — marched into the kitchen, 
and brought forth a minute speck of roasted calf, a small bit 
of sausage, (containing a very large amount of garlic,) a 
shade of Normandy cheese, a yard or two of French bread, 
and the everlasting " Vin Ordinaire," or common wine, 



1 2 Papers from over the Water. 

which all Frenchmen, and women too, drink as freely as 
our German cousins do of lager. 

With these " courses " we made, seasoned with any quan- 
tity of laughter, (excellent sauce for any meal anywhere,) 
a most excellent dinner, our talk and movements affording 
great amusement to the different groups of the " natives " 
who were dining and laughing in the same room. 

After this most magnificent entertainment, the enjoyment 
of which by our party was never exceeded by the Grand 
Mogul at any of his state feasts, we drove for an hour about 
the outskirts of the garden, which, I suppose, is the most 
beautiful place of the kind in the world. So many descriptions 
of it have been printed, that I shall not now attempt 
another. 

FIREWORKS. 

By the time evening set in, the illumination had com- 
menced ; I can describe it only in brief, and poorly. Place 
in front of your mind's eye a beautiful oblong basin of wa- 
ter, of some acres in extent, ornamented with appropriate 
groups of statues. On one side of this basin, at its centre, 
place a flower-garden of colored lights, (on the ground,) cov- 
ering a bed of some two hundred and fifty feet in length by 
some fifty feet in width ; on either side of this bed of flow- 
ers, place columns, arches, and festoons of gold-colored and 
green and crimson lights, for some six hundred feet each 
way from the centre. 

Then, when these thousands of colored lights are all burn- 
ing as bright as art and science can make them, up on an 
instant, as if by magic, spring hundreds of water-jets, throw- 
ing their liquid columns from ten to twenty feet high, rival- 
ing in beauty the sparkling colored lights; then, in and 
around and before and behind these jets, see clouds of 
crimson smoke, or air, giving the same color to the leaping 



Sunday. 13 

jets; then, as the green dies away, up comes a shade of 
crimson, making the playing fountains look as if they, too, 
were of the same hue ; and so on, with different shades of 
colors. 

Presently up rose, in and among the water-jets, just as 
many jets of fire, of the same size and shape — making a 
continuous circular row of jets of fire and water, the most 
beautiful sight imaginable. While these were doing their 
work, the air was filled with rockets and other explosive fire- 
works, thousands of which seemed to come out of the water 
in the great basin. By and by, a grand explosion of fire- 
works took place in the basin, in size and appearance like 
the crater of some volcano. 

So, with fire and water, and water and fire, on the earth, 
and in the air, and from the water, the evening sped on till al- 
most midnight; then the acres and acres of people, numbering 
scores and scores of thousands, began to move, with as 
much order as such great masses could move ; no quarrel- 
ing, no fighting, no swearing ; and back to Paris we all came 
safe and sound, having seen what only a few Americans can 
see. 

Beggars are not seen in the streets of Paris. 

SUNDAY. 

An American is taken all aback on his first Sunday here, 
at seeing the greater part of the stores open, and mechanics 
at work. He will also be surprised at the absence of chil- 
dren in the streets on week-days. 

I spent a few hours at the Great Exposition, and great it 
is ; great in extent, in variety of articles, in beauty of ar- 
rangement, and in the immensity of its whole, a complete 
World's Congress of artistic and mechanical Niagaras. 

I miss one thing here exceedingly, to wit : our Croton 



14 Papers from over the Water. 

water, in its softness and extravagance of quantity. Good 
drinking and washing water I have not yet found in this city, 
and though ice is as cold here as at home, it is not seen 
in such profusion as with us, nor is it so clear and pure. 

HORSES AND HARNESS. 

We New-Yorkers can beat Paris in horses ; not in number, 
but in beauty of appearance and grace of action. The poor 
animals are loaded down with harness and other useless in- 
cumbrances, and are made to move loads greater in weight 
than any thing ever dreamed of in America. The loads that 
one horse will move here are enough to frighten the souls 
out of all the horses in New- York. American horses, like 
their owners, are favored above the rest of the world. Let 
them be thankful. 

French vehicles of all sorts are much heavier than ours, 
in fact, heavier than required for their work. A light, grace- 
ful American wagon attracts much notice when seen in the 
streets. The principal employment of the men of Paris 
seems to be sitting in front of a cafe, drinking, smoking, and 
chatting. The women tend the shops, and seem to do near- 
ly all the work, even sweeping the streets. 



II. 



A Lieutenant-Governor in a fix — Women at Work — Calvin's 
Church — How Pigs go to Market — Rothschild's House — 
Geneva — A Dutch Traveler — Clothes- Washing — Swiss 
Steamers — Intelligent Englishman — Swiss Peasants — 



Mont Blanc, etc. 



Berne, Switzerland, September, 1867. 
On. my way from Paris to Geneva, I remained over night 
at an old French town called Macon, (after which our Geor- 
gia town of that name was christened.) On entering the 
breakfast-room of the hotel, just at daybreak, for a cup of 
coffee, who should come in, carpet-bag in hand,- but our 
Lieutenant-Governor Woodford, who, not seeing me in the 
dimly lighted room, was electrified by hearing his name in a 
familiar voice. A man is not often more pleased to 
see another than was the eloquent young President of 
our State Senate on seeing me. He had left Paris for 
Geneva and got off the train at Macon to change cars, and 
not being as familiar with Napoleon's French as he is with 
our American English, he failed to find the right car, and 
the train moved off and left him standing in a crowd where 
not a soul could understand him, so he had to stay over 
night and take a train the next morning ; and as I happened 
to be the first person he met that could speak his own lan- 
guage, and being also an old friend unexpectedly met with in 



1 6 Papers from over the Water. 

a strange place, one can readily see why he was pleased at 
meeting me. 

VINES— S UGA R-BEE TS. 

From Paris to Geneva, (sixteen hours by rail,) the road gen- 
erally traverses a beautiful country, highly cultivated. Be- 
tween Dijon and Macon we travel through miles and miles 
of vineyards, the hillsides being covered with vines to their 
very tops, while on either side of the streams that wind their 
way through the valleys, acres on acres are covered with the 
sugar-beet, and along the highways and by the river-banks, 
more poplar-trees are standing than Mr. Greeley saw of 
buffaloes on his overland trip to the Pacific, though he says 
that he saw several millions. 

CL O THES- WA SHING. 

One of the most common sights seen along the route was 
women washing clothes in the rivers, and working in the fields 
and vineyards. In fact, the women in this part of the world 
seem to do all the work, or most of it. I saw six women 
and two men raking hay on the lawn in front of a Rothschild 
mansion, near Geneva, and that is less than the average pro- 
portion of women to be seen at out-door work. 

CALVIN S CHURCH. 

I attended service on Sunday in the old church in Geneva 
that Calvin once thundered in, and saw his pulpit occupied 
by a fine-looking, good-natured young man, with a face the 
very antipode of the vinegar- visage of that sturdy old preach- 
er, whose bones may rattle in his coffin, for aught I know, 
at the desecration (?) of his old dwelling-house by the Cath- 
olic Sisters of Mercy who now occupy it. Thus goes our race. 
To-day, Papist ; to-morrow, Protestant ; the next, Papist, and 
so on — change after change, and revolution on revolution, 



Grounds of a Rothschild. 1 7 

and reformation following revolution ; but over and above 
Papacy, and Protestantism, and revolution, and reformation, 
towers Christianity, and onward moves the leveling up of our 
common humanity, as irresistible as the steps of time, and 
as universal as the death that follows. Pope can not stop it ; 
reformer can not change it. 

PIGS TO MARKET. 

We of New- York think that the good Mr. Bergh (may his 
long shadow never be less !) has done much for " dumb " crea- 
tures ; but he never thought, in all the kindness of his bene- 
volent, nature of carrying pigs to market on a good thick bed of 
straw in a wagon, as is done at Geneva. Bless the Genevan 
pig-merchants ! May their pigs never have the measles ! 

Standing in one of the streets in Geneva, I saw an elegant 
pair of horses before a handsome barouche ; horses had on fine 
harness, with the owner's monogram in beautiful metal; bells, 
with fur padding, on their necks; the driver in fine livery, and 
the traces of the harness made of rope ! 

In the reading-room of my hotel at Geneva, I saw a like- 
ness of Lincoln, printed on satin, with the words, " Deposed 
1865." It was printed at Lyons. Price, three francs. 
On visiting the house once occupied by Byron, the porter in 
charge gave us some plums of a very superior sort, the seeds 
of which will find their way to America. 

GROUNDS OF A ROTHSCHILD. 

The Genevan hotel-keepers make much ado about the 
house and grounds of one of the Rothschilds; so, after pro- 
viding myself with a card of admission about the size of a 
pane of glass, (not a small one either,) on which was printed 
the coat-of-arms of the unwillingly retired money-king, 
accompanied by a note stating that no money was to 



1 8 Papers from over the Water. 

be given to the gatekeeper — unnecessary in my case, for I 
don't do any more of that work than the law allows ; and 
that no smoking was permitted on the premises — : a great 
drawback to my pleasure, for I like a cigar as well as the 
reticent U. S. G.; and a further notice that dogs were not 
admitted, (even by card ;) a notice not required in my case, 
for I have as much as I can attend to without a dog — I rode 
up to, and entered the sacred place, (six women and two men 
raking hay on the lawn,) and walked over it — riding not 
allowed. Fine house, good outlook, pretty flower-beds, but 
the place as a whole doesn't compare with that of Morris 
Ketchum, at Westport, Ct. We honored the place by leav- 
ing our names in a register kept for that purpose. On our 
way back to Geneva, the coachman pointed out to us the 
place once occupied by Voltaire, and a house where 
Josephine lived after the divorce. By the way, is it accidental, 
or is it retributive, that the grandson of her whom the old 
Napoleon discarded for lack of children, should to-day fill the 
place of him who did that great wrong ? 

GARIBALDI. 

One week ago, Geneva was alive with the excitement of 
a visit from Garibaldi. Great processions, bands of music, 
singing-bands about the streets all night, illuminated steam- 
ers in the harbor, fireworks, etc. Within three days there- 
after, according to the papers, he left Geneva, like the 
descent of the rocket-sticks fired on his arrival. Thus it is 
with all who dare to have opinions of their own and cour- 
age enough to express them. 

What with the Garibaldi excitement and the visit of a 
Japanese embassy, the Genevese, last week, had about as much 
as they could get along with ; but as that old town has seen 
many changes and great commotions, it will probably 



Swiss People. 19 

survive the visit of the Orientals and the speeches of the 

red-shirted hero. 

-■ 

QUEER STEAMERS AND DROLL STEERING. 

I made a trip up and down Lake Geneva, on one of their 
queer-looking steamers, the steersman standing at the stem, 
and generally guided by the signals of another man nearer 
the bow. Elevated places for the steersman, such as our 
boats have, are not known hereabout, two or more persons 
generally doing what one would do with us, though in one 
instance — which I will soon refer to — this was not the case. 

Other persons have so often written about Lake Geneva 
that I shall not say much about it. Its water is not so clear 
as that of some of our own lakes. 

INTELLIGENT ENGLISHMAN. 

During the trip, I fell in with a young Englishman, with 
whom I talked on American matters, and soon found myself 
surrounded by a group of gentlemen of that ilk ; among 
others; a London barrister, at least sixty years of age, a 
member of the conservative club of that city, and a man 
of importance enough in his own town (near London) to 
have once had his house sacked by a mob on account of his 
politics, who asked me if "the English language tvas gen- 
erally spoke?i in America? Do our British cousins need a 
schoolmaster ? 

After nearly a week's sojourn at Geneva, I took the stage 
for Chamounix, up the valley of the roaring, splashing, milky- 
looking Arve, whose waters hesitate to mingle with the 
Rhone for a long way below Geneva. 

SWISS PEOPLE. 

This part of Savoy, and indeed the greater part of the 
route to Chamounix, and thence to Martigny, over the Tete 



20 Papers from over the Water. 

Noir, is inhabited by poor peasants, cultivating small patches 
of ground as well as they know how, with tools as old in 
style as the mountains they are hemmed in by. They are 
of small stature, many are deformed, and a large portion of 
them, especially the women, have those odious excrescences 
on the neck that have defied the physicians of all countries. 

The houses, and barns, and stables are all under one roof, 
the dwelling-parts poorly lighted and not at all ventilated ; 
indeed, one may believe that these people are afraid of air 
and light, and, judging from the common practice of placing 
iron grates to every window, (but few of them, and small ones 
at that,) they must be either great cowards or great thieves. 

If, however, they shun light and air in their dwellings, 
they do not shun work, especially the women, for they work 
all day long, even knitting as they walk along the roads 
(which, by the way, are as good as experience, money, and 
labor can make them) with heavy loads on their heads. 
The people are saving, too — even scraping up manure on the 
highways, the women, of course, doing even that work. 

CHAMOUNIX AND MONT BLANC. 

Before reaching Chamounix we encountered a heavy rain- 
storm, but on reaching the village the storm ceased. The 
setting sun came out gloriously, and shone with his brightest 
rays on Mont Blanc, which in turn reflected back from his 
clear, white face the brilliancy of the departing day-god; 
and as he sank to rest, up came the queen of night, throw- 
ing her silvery radiance coquettishly on the crown of the 
snow-clad monarch of the mountains. And thus we had an 
Alpine storm, a sunset and moonlight view of the great 
mount; and to add to our pleasure, the next morning was 
as bright and beautiful a one as ever came over the moun- 
tain-tops to wake sleepers in the valleys. Mont Blanc by 



Easy Way to ascend a Mountain. 21 

sunset, by moonlight, by sunrise, paid us for the long ride in 
the diligence. 

EASY WAY TO ASCEND A MOUNTAIN. 

Chamounix was thrown into a fever of excitement, the 
morning after our arrival, by a novel sight. A very fat Ger- 
man, too heavy for mule-riding, who wanted to " do" the 
mountains, provided himself with a broad belt, which he 
placed around his back and under his arms. To the end of 
this belt a mule was attached by rope traces some eight or 
ten feet long; and back of the fat German some six feet, was 
another man, with another broad belt under his arms and 
around his back, and with traces fast to the fat chap ; and as 
the mule started off, hauling behind him fat and lean Ger- 
mans, the guides and the chambermaids and the waiters, 
and all the visitors of the place, turned out to see the trio, 
mule and Germans, guide not counted, depart amid shouts 
of laughter. 

I presume that mode of ascending a mountain is not at 
all new, but it is of so rare occurrence at Chamounix as to 
attract a crowd and cause great merriment. 

I think the trip must have ended well, as I saw the fat 
old chap the next day puffing and sweating, on his way to 
the Tete Noir (Black-Head Mountain.) 

One of the most noticeable things hereabout is the fine 
appearance and good address of the hotel waiters. They 
are the smartest-looking and best-dressed young men we 
meet, and generally very attentive. At Martigny, there were 
twenty-eight persons at the dinner-table, and o?ily two waiters, 
(either of whom was, in appearance, fit to fill a pulpit or plead 
a cause in court,) and the whole party were promptly and 
well waited on, course by course, French style. 

Hotels are generally good ; the only exception we have 



22 Papers from over the Water. 

thus far found, being that of the Hotel Beau Rivage, at a 
place called Ouchy, on Lake Geneva. This hotel is like a 
whited sepulchre — fair without, but within it is — let all Ame- 
ricans pass it! — the manager don't want them; he prefers 
English patronage. 

Our American women do not all dress with as much taste 
and propriety as do the French ; but for tact, vim, self-reliance, 
general intelligence, go-aheaditiveness, good looks, whole- 
someness of appearance, smartness, they beat all creation — 
that is, so much of female creation as one meets in travel- 
ing this way. 



III. 



A Bear Stoty — Hoisting Stone — A Saving People — Blue- 
beard's Castle — Over the Mountains — Beautiful Sight 
— Sunday — Swiss Cottages — Baden-Bade?i and its Gam- 
blers. 

Heidelberg, Germany, September, 1867. 
Before leaving Berne, (from which place I last wrote,) I 
visited the Bears' Den, as all good travelers are bound to 
do, or lose caste with the Bernese, who are all bear worship- 
ers — in fact, Berne is bear, and bear is Berne. 

BEARS" BANK. 

According to history, as related to me, there was, many 
years ago, a sum set apart for the maintenance of a certain 
number of these pretty little creatures, which in time in- 
creased faster than did the beasts, and so a law was passed 
creating a fund out of the accumulated profits of the bears' 
money, and this institution is now known as the Bears' 
Bank. Whether the officers of the bank are bears or bulls, I 
don't know, but this I do know — that the bears I saw were 
a comfortable-looking set of fellows, and were taking things 
much easier than owners of banks do in America. I do not 
vouch for the truth of this " Bear story." 

HOISTING STONE. 

To hoist stone on to a high building in course of erection, 
at Berne, a huge wheel, like an old-fashioned overshot water- 



24 Papers from over the Water. 

wheel, was placed in a great framework of timber, a rope 
wound round it, to one end of which the stone to be lifted 
was attached, and the wheel then made to revolve by some 
dozen men walking inside of it, tread-mill style. This was a 
labor-saving machine with a vengeance. Three men, with 
one of our derricks, wouH have raised a stone twice as large 
and in half the time. In countries where labor is as cheap 
as in Switzerland, inventions substituting machines for ma- 
nual labor are not overcommon. 

On my way to Interlaken I passed Lake Thun, a much 
prettier lake than Geneva, reminding one of our own Lake 
George, its hillsides being, of course, much more highly cul- 
tivated. 

ECONOMY. 

The Swiss are a saving people, turning every thing to ac- 
count — gathering up the falling leaves, cutting off and car- 
rying home from long distances, little twigs from the ever- 
green trees, (such as spruce, hemlock, etc.,) to be used in the 
winter as bedding for their cows, sheep, and goats, and to be 
converted into manure for their little patches of land. In 
saving manure, they pile up alternate layers of straw and 
manure as carefully and systematically as an American far- 
mer lays up a cheese of ground apples for the press of the 
cider-mill ; some of their manure-heaps made in this manner 
being fifty feet long and six to eight feet high, and from fif- 
teen to twenty feet in width. 

BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE. 

While at Interlaken I visited an old castle where, according 
to the local guide-books, Bluebeard lived and killed. From 
the top of its ruined walls I looked over the plain to see if 
there were any galloping horsemen coming to the rescue of 
the old sinner's victims ; but instead of hearing the clattering 



Beautiful Scene. 25 

horses' feet bent on a work of mercy, I heard the clattering 
of a dozen old-fashioned flax-breaking machines, lively and 
smartly worked — for twenty cents per day — by as many sun- 
browned women, right under the castle's walls, and not one 
of the dozen bore the least resemblance to the pretty crea- 
tures my picture-book used to contain. I don't believe old 
Bluebeard or his dear little victims were ever*in that old 
castle. 

Of course I had, like hosts of other victims at Interlaken, 
to " do" the Wengem Alp via Lauterbrunnen. 

After waiting some days for the Jung Frau to show her 
face, which was vailed with a thick cloud, we started off for 
the Wengern Alp and Little Scheideck, (6400 feet above 
the water,) where we arrived just at dark, and remained 
over night. 

GREA T MOUNTAINS. 

On our way up the valley of the Lauterbrunnen, we 
passed those mighty mountains of solid stone, towering up 
layer by layer for thousands of feet, as regular in their hori- 
zontal strata as if laid by line and rule, telling one plainly 
that they were God's battlements, laughing to scorn all 
human attempts to scale their giddy heights or to sap their 
eternal foundations — huge piles of granite, made for the 
weary clouds to rest their tired feet on as they go wandering 
up and down through space. 

BEAUTIFUL SCENE. 

When we arose in the morning, the sun was just reaching 
the tops of the mountains all about us, and the Jung Frau 
was so glad to see him that she raised her cloud-vail to bid 
him good-morning, and her greeting was joined in by the 
Eiger, the White Monk, and that prettiest of all mountain- 
peaks, the Silver Horn ; and all around us the ragged and 



26 Papers from over the Water. 

snow-clad mountain-tops bid the glorious sun good-morrow, 
while to make the scene a little lively and somewhat noisy, 
a miniature avalanche came dancing down a ravine between 
the White Monk and the Jung Frau. 

Two thousand feet below us lay a clear white cloud, look- 
ing for all the world like a monster fleece of wool, just taken 
from some mammoth sheep, so white, so soft, so compact, so 
smooth did it seem as it hung on the mountain-sides, border- 
ed by the evergreen trees that crawled up the hills around it; 
while down, down, thousands of feet under this wool-cloud, 
lay the little hamlet of Grindenwald, as effectually hid from 
our view as if it had never had a place on God's great foot- 
stool. 

As the sun rose higher and higher over the mountains and 
touched the edges of this cloud of wool-vapor, it began to 
ascend and find its way up the valleys, and hours before we 
reached Grindenwald, that village was as plain to us as if 
cloud and fog and vapor had never hid it. 

At this time of the year, the Swiss people drive their sheep 
from the mountains down into the valleys, and shear them. 
American wool-growers would think September rather a late 
month for shearing their sheep. 

I have seen but little of the land of Tell. Can't say I like 
it. Its mountains are grand, awfully grand, its valleys pretty, 
its streams rapid, its people — not so tall as their mountains, 
not so smiling as their valleys, not so swift-moving as their 
streams. 

SWISS COTTAGES. 

Looking at their dwellings — I speak of those of the pea- 
santry — from a distance they appear picturesque, perched as 
they often are on some crag or on a green hillside, but a near 
approach to them dispels all romance. They are dark, dirty, 
and foul, and thousands of them much more uncomfortable 



Gambling. 2 7 

than many American pig-pens, poisoning the air around 
them with stench from all sorts of noisome things. 

Swiss cottages look well in picture-books ; but Swiss cot- 
tages, in nature, have terrible odors, and look best at a 
distance. 

A DOUBLE CHURCH. 

In this town, Heidelberg, there is a large church divided 
in two parts by a wall from floor to ceiling. On one side of 
this partition the Catholics hold service, and on the other 
side the Protestants; while outside the church, against its 
walls, and under its windows, protected by the eaves of its 
roof, right under the droppings of the sanctuary, Catholic 
and Protestant — and, for aught I know, Jew and Gentile, 
Greek and Turk — carry on their different callings in little 
shops and stores all day long on Sunday ! That may be 
said to be serving God and mammon at the same time and 
in the same place. 

I have not seen a quiet, still Sunday since I left New- York. 
Such a thing as a total suspension of trade on a Sunday, 
according to our American ideas, seems to be unknown this 
way. At least, this is my experience thus far. 

GAMBLING. 

On my way here I called at Baden-Baden. That place is 
wrongly named : it should be Bad-an'- Worse. Our readers 
know its fame, or rather its infamy, for gambling; but one 
that has not seen it scarcely realizes its terrible character. 

Think of old gray-haired men ; young beardless boys ; 
sweet girls of sixteen — yes, younger than that; men of middle 
age, women of no particular age, all sitting around a great 
table in a public-hall as large as any church in our city, gam- 
bling, gambling, gambling; and, to crown the picture, see an 



28 Papers from over the Water. 

old woman, trembling with age, shaking with the palsy, too 
feeble to walk to the table — see such a one carried in a chair, 
and a place made for her at the devil's board, around which 
knaves and fools, lunatics and men-wolves, money-seekers 
and money-spenders, gather like the ravens about a carcass; 
see the haggard look of the losers, the snake-like look of the 
winners, the anxious stare of the desperate ones, the grievous 
anger of the one, the joyous pleasure of the other, the fear, 
the hope, the suspense, and the infatuation of all. It must 
be seen to be realized. The name must be changed from 
Baden-Baden to Bad-an'-Worse, for no worse place is there 
this side of that worst of places against which we have been 
warned since time began. 



IV. 



A Big Wine- Cask — Frankfort and the Jews — Wiesbaden — 
Wine — Great Church — Dow?i the Rhine — Crowning a 
Yankee — Aix-la- Chapelle — -Among the Dutch — A Yearly 
Visitor — Women towing Canal-Boats, etc. 

Amsterdam, Holland, October, 1867. 

Since my last letter I have visited the old castle fortress of 
Heidelberg, at that place, one of the grandest old ruins in 
Europe. Its huge towers, battlements, grand old corridors, 
stately halls, grim vaults, monstrous wine-cellars, broken col- 
umns, shattered window-places, ivy-covered walls, and grass- 
grown turrets make it a wonderfully interesting place, es- 
pecially to us of the New World. 

In its wine-cellar is a cask large enough to contain eight 
hundred English hogsheads. It was never filled but once, 
and that a great many years ago. Its staves are ten inches 
thick. It is as large as a small house, and big enough for a 
good-sized " tea-party " to dance in. 

FRANKFORT. 

On leaving Heidelberg, we went to Frankfort, which, con- 
trary to my expectations, I found to be quite a modern-look- 
ing city — that is, a greater part of it — with well-paved, clean 
streets, light, comfortable-looking houses, beautiful flower- 
gardens, etc. Of course, there are some parts of it which 



30 Papers from over the Water. 

are old, dirty, and very gloomy, such as the Jews' street, 
where those money-monarchs — the Rothschilds — were born, 
their old house still standing on its tottering foundation, and 
surrounded by others that need the aid of great props to 
keep them from tumbling down. 

At one time the Jews were compelled to remain in their 
own street during certain hours and certain days — a pro- 
scribed, degraded class. Now, nearly every Christian nation 
in Europe is in debt to these same outcasts, for money to 
uphold their shaky thrones, many of which are nearer 
the tumble-down precipice of decay than even the old 
houses in the once degraded Jews' street of Frankfort ; and 
to-day one of the proudest monarchies in the world dare not 
offend the money-king, who, it is said, would rather be the 
" Jew of the kings than the king of the Jews ;" for, when the 
Bismarckian William of Prussia called on the city of Frank- 
fort to pay tribute-money for its municipal action in regard 
to the war between Prussia and Austria, the money-king 
told the political king that he could, if he chose, make 
Frankfort pay it, but if he did, he, the king, could borrow no 
money for his future wants. 

The tribute-money has not been collected. (So runs the 
story.) 

Thus the persecuted of yesterday, are to-day the masters 
of the persecutors, and some of their descendants live in pal- 
aces more luxurious than any ever occupied by the ancestors of 
their former persecutors. The wheels of Time's old car roll 
over and over continuously, and in their rolling the spokes 
catch up and throw down kings and peoples like the dust on 
the highway. Yesterday, kings led the people with halters 
— to-day the people make blocks and halters for the kings. 

The people of Frankfort are fine-looking, bright, active, 
intelligent. Their public squares, monuments, (of Goethe, 



Down the Rhine. 31 

Schiller, and others,) galleries of art, etc., give evidence of 
good taste and liberality. A fine people and a fine city. 

From Frankfort to Wiesbaden is a pleasant trip, through a 
well-cultivated and beautiful country. 

Wiesbaden is a duplicate of Baden-Baden in the way of 
public gambling, only more so. The drives and promenades 
are perfectly charming. The Greek chapel there, erected 
by one of the dukes as a mausoleum for his wife, is one of 
the richest and most tasteful structures of its size in Europe, 
and cost more than a million of dollars. 

WINE. 

While at Wiesbaden, we drove out to the famous vineyard 
of Johannisberg, where that high-priced and kingly wine is 
made, and, like many other traveling fools, bought, at the 
chateau of Prince Metternich, (who owns the vineyard,) a 
bottle of the precious (in price) stuff, and a more sour, dis- 
agreeable liquor I never tasted. I suppose my early educa- 
tion in wine-drinking was so imperfect as to make me an 
unfit judge of the article. 

DOWN THE RHINE. 

From Wiesbaden down the Rhine, that river of old cas- 
tles, old legends, vine-clad hills, mountain-bound shores, 
ancient towns, decayed villages, queer-looking steamers ; here 
turning around a bold, castle-crowned promontory, there 
steaming under a protecting crag, from whose summit we 
were frowned upon by the battlements of a robber knight's 
retreat; here passing an ascending river-craft, towed by 
horses, with the towing-line at the top of the tall mast-head, 
there past old fortresses and new castles ; and thus, down 
this old highway, whose every cliff and hill and mountain 
has a record of strife, of injustice, of heroism, of endurance, 
of suffering; whose every mountain-top has witnessed 



3 2 Papers from over the Water. 

deeds that thrill the soul with emotions of awe or chill the 
blood with horror; whose every slope has been bathed in 
human blood — down its current we steamed to the old Roman 
town of Bonn. From Bonn to Cologne the country is rich in 
fertility, and beautiful to look at. 

GREAT CATHEDRAL 

The Christian world knows of the Cathedral of Cologne, 
second in size only to the great St. Peter's of Rome. 

It is great, gloomily magnificent, huge, and impressively 
wonderful in its effect upon the beholder, especially one from 
America, where our churches and meeting-houses are mere 
toy-houses in appearance, and where little appeal is made to 
artistic taste. It is no wonder that the religion of Rome 
has had and still has such a hold on the people. 

Its great churches, magnificent cathedrals, splendid pic- 
tures, exquisite carvings of stone and wood, grand altar- 
pieces, its gorgeous vesments, its wonderful ceremonials, and 
all the pomp and pageantry that genius can devise or that art 
can paint or chisel cut, all that the eye can admire or the ear 
take in — all, all this is in that great old faith which, in spite 
of the objections urged against it, was one of the greatest 
civilizers that humanity had in the olden time. To me it 
has always been a wonder that Protestantism, with its bare- 
walled churches, its plain-clad austerity and ascetic nothing- 
ness of ceremony, should ever have found a proselyte. 

The old cathedral at Cologne has a large stock of relics, 
which are shown to all who will pay to look at them. 

Between Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle is more splendid 
farming-land, highly cultivated. Aix, or, as the Germans 
call it, " Achen," is a fine town, with clean streets, but few 
vehicles and fewer horses, and is more of a modern than an 
ancient city, though much remains that is ancient. Its old 
cathedral contains a greater variety of relics than that of 



A New Monarch. 



33 



Cologne ; a list of them is printed in pamphlet form. It was 
on a Sunday afternoon that I visited it; the service was 
scarcely over before the sacristan espied me and beckoned 
me to come within the altar railing, and being joined by an- 
other of the church officials in black and white robes, I was 
shown into the inner chamber where the valuable things are 
kept, such as precious stones of all sorts, diamonds, em- 
eralds, rubies, and the like, too numerous to mention ; also 
crowns, sceptres, swords, etc. 

CROWNED. 

Unlocking a strong, iron-bound case, the sacristan placed 
before my wondering eyes a crowned bust (in silver) of the 
great Charlemagne, and taking the crown (once worn by the 
great emperor) off the head of the metal bust, placed it on 
mine, remarking, in a laughing way, as it slipped over my 
head down on my shoulders, that the old emperor had a 
larger head than mine ; which I did not dispute, for, accord- 
ing to veritable history, the old fellow was nearly seven feet 
high, while I lack at least a foot and a half of that measure. 
His sceptre is also shown, but as the day of royal sceptres 
has passed never to return, that old bauble of former kingly 
power is now a mere toy-relic, to be looked at by those who 
live in a better time than its old master ever saw. To-day 
the pen is the great sceptre, and printer's ink the battering- 
ram that levels city walls and batters down granite fortifica- 
tions stronger than any ever taken by old Charlemagne. 

A NEW MONARCH. 

The old church and city are full of relics of Charlemagne, 
who spent much of his time here when not engaged in his 
great wars ; but to-day a greater and more mighty monarch 
than ever he was, lives and reigns in Aix-la-Chapelle — a 



34 Papers from over the Water. 

monarch whose realms are greater than his ever were, whose 
empire is based on deeper and stronger foundations than 
those of any old king or kaiser that lived or ruled in the 
past; a monarch whose empire girdles the earth, and to 
whom tribute is paid by all the world ; whose subjects com- 
prise nearly all that is human; a monarch before whose 
throne kings bow down and princes vail their faces — King 
Steam ; for now Aix-la-Chapelle is a thriving, busy, prosper- 
ous manufacturing city, from every point of which tall 
chimneys rise proudly skyward, the brows of which are 
crowned with more victorious wreaths than were ever worn 
by old-time warriors ; wreaths of power to supply human 
wants and add to human comforts — not wreaths of kingly 
wrongs done to vanquished peoples. Steam is more kingly 
than old Charlemagne, and now steam rules in " Achen." 
Let it reign evermore. 

The old Town-Hall in Aix is a fine relic of the olden 
time. In its saloon, or hall of ceremony, there have been 
thirty-six German emperors crowned ; their portraits now 
hang on its walls, looking for all the world as if they held the 
men and things of to-day in supreme contempt, and were 
sighing for the good old times when they were on earth and 
lording it over the people. 

They have gone, and with them much of the barbarism 
and inhumanity that so long kept the race under their 
thrones. 

AMSTERDAM AND ITS CANALS. 

Amsterdam is a quaint old city, whose streets (many of 
them) are canals, and whose canals are streets. Canals 
here, there, and everywhere — straight canals and crooked 
ones — large canals and small ones. Its carts are mostly 
canal-boats, and its canal-boats are mostly carts, though a 
few wheeled carts are tolerated in its few paved streets, but 



The Hague. 35 

the drivers are not allowed to ride on their carts — they 
must walk with their horses. 

The people are remarkably red-cheeked and healthy-look- 
ing; the business men, as smart-appearing gentlemen as I 
ever saw ; its women clean and tidy in their dress, and the 
houses perfect models of cleanliness. There are a great 
many old buildings in Amsterdam, the one I lodged in 
having been used as a hotel for more than two hundred 
and fifty years, and judging from their looks, some of the 
present attachees must have been at the laying of the 
corner-stone, or rather at the driving of the first pile, for the 
old house, as well as much of the city, is built on those per- 
pendicular wooden foundations. 

THE HAGUE. 

From Amsterdam to the Hague is but a short trip, 
through a flat, canal, and ditch covered country. The Hague 
is one of the most beautiful small cities in Europe — broad, 
shady streets, some canals, few carriages, fine dwellings, and 
many wealthy people. The palace of the Queen is in a fine 
forest, some half an hour's distance from the city. The 
King visits her once a year. Her palace is a plain-looking 
building without, but within is very fine, containing one of 
the most magnificent rooms to be seen anywhere. It is of 
octagon form, very high, with a great dome ornamented with 
splendid frescoes. The sides of the room are covered with 
magnificent paintings by Rubens and his pupils. Hague 
contains an excellent gallery of paintings, embracing several 
by the great masters. 

Many of its streets are paved with thin brick, set up edge- 
wise, making a very easy, comfortable carriage-way. The 
country about Hague is, like the rest of Holland, flat. 



36 Papers fro??i over the Water. 

WOMEN AS HORSES. 

While there I saw two women towing a large boat on a 
canal, just as horses tow boats on our canals at home — a 
strange sight for an American. We don't make our women 
do that sort of work, but in Holland it is quite different. 
Many of the Hollanders live entirely on the canals. Their 
boats are their castles, and the women do more of the work 
of managing them than the men. Scarcely a cart or wagon 
at the Hague has either shafts or poles or any thing by 
which to guide it, except the rope-traces with which the 
horses draw it. As the streets are perfectly level, I suppose 
these things can be dispensed with; but if shafts and poles 
were absent there was an abundance of harness, that on each 
horse containing leather enough for at least four. 



V. 

Rotterdam — Breakfast Smokers — Hauling Brick — Antwerp — 
Blanketed Cattle in the Field — Cow -Mil king — Brussels 
— Indignant Peddler — Paris — Queer Sign near a Ceme- 
tery — Public Respect to Passing Funerals — Lafayette's 
Grave — Elevated Hencoop — B?-ick- Raising, etc. 

Paris, October, 1867. 

From the Hague to Rotterdam the traveler sees the usual 
variety of Hollandish landscape, including the regular num- 
ber of canals and windmills. 

Rotterdam is a busy place, and like Amsterdam, its streets 
are canals, and its canals are streets. At the principal hotel, 
the men sit at breakfast with their hats on, and smoke pipes 
and cigars, and display .samples of tobacco for sale, regard- 
less of the ladies. 

Three men hauled more brick in a cart over a level street 
than is carried in four of the one-horse brick-carts used in 
New- York, and the women would remove brick from a ca- 
nal-boat much faster than men unload them at the wharves 
of Gotham. 

The city has a very pretty little park, and its wharves give 
evidence of commercial thrift. 

ANTWERP. 

Antwerp, the home of Rubens, the portrayer of fat women 
and skillful user of bright colors on canvas, is a comfort- 
able city and can show some of the finest pictures in Europe. 



38 Papers from over the Water. 

FARM SCENES. 

In the fall of the year, the handsome cows that feed on 
the flat, wet fields of Holland, are covered with blankets, and 
are nearly all spotted black and white, scarcely any other 
color being seen, and the sheep are large, with coarse wool 
that denotes cold weather. The farmers huddle together in 
villages, but few farm-houses being seen on the farms. In- 
stead of driving the cows home at milking-time, like Ameri- 
can farmers, the milkers put their clean wooden cans with 
polished brass hoops into little boats, and paddle away up 
the small canals to where the blanketed cows are fishing bits 
of grass out of the water that covers many of the pasture-fields, 
and after the milking is done, home they go again, and the 
milk is converted into excellent cheese and butter that can 
not be excelled out of Holland. Fences and hedges are 
not often seen in Holland; little canals and ditches supersede 
them. 

BR USSEL S— WA TERL 00. 

Brussels is one of the prettiest cities of the Old World, with 
beautiful ladies, and military officers as handsome as need be. 

On approaching the entrance to the field of Waterloo, we 
were hailed by a lad of some fifteen summers, selling canes, 
buttons, and other articles from the battle-ground. He dis- 
coursed eloquently about Napoleon, Wellington, the great 
battle, all the while urging us to buy of his wares. After fol- 
lowing the carriage for some distance, and seeing that we 
would not buy any thing, he turned from us, and as he strode 
across the road, he waved his hand toward us with a grace 
and dignity that would have made the fortunes of a dozen 
Forrests, exclaiming, as he marched off, " Go home, and for- 
get Waterloo." Belgium is a charming country, if one may 
judge by what is seen of it between Holland and France, 
and the trip from Brussels to Paris is perfectly charming. 



Lafayette's Tomb. 39 

DROLL SIGNS. 

Near the main entrance to the cemetery of Pere la 
Chaise, in Paris, are numerous places for the sale of im- 
mortelles, tombstones, and other articles suitable for such dis- 
play of affection for the dead as the tastes and means of the 
living will permit the purchase of; not forgetting what we 
Americans would call " side shows," places of amusement, in 
one of which, so the huge signboard over the door pro- 
claimed, the spectator could see a pictorial representation of 
the marriage of the Virgin and of the birth of J. C. — these 
letters standing for the name of him who died in the flesh, 
that others might live in the spirit ; next to this, Punch and 
Judy, properly " Frenchified," were holding forth to the de- 
light of the lookers-on. 

FUNERALS. 

These peculiar sights, near a great cemetery, must not be 
taken as evidence of lack of respect to the dead, on the part 
of the Parisians, as that would be unjust. When a funeral 
takes place in church, the main door is covered with heavy 
black cloth, on which may be seen the initials of the deceased 
in large white letters; and when a funeral procession passes 
slowly along the street, no matter whether large or small, no 
matter whether the dead traveler was rich or poor, high or 
low, every man raises his hat out of respect to the passing 
corpse, and every woman crosses herself, an affecting custom, 
the spirit of which we might imitate, instead of driving our 
dead friends to the grave on a " good, stiff trot," unnoticed by 
the passers-by, as we generally do. 

LAFAYETTE'S TOMB. 

In one of the eastern suburbs of the French capital, in an 
out-of-the-way corner of a small semi-private, semi-public 



40 Papers from over the Water. 

cemetery, attached to an old Augustine convent, is a little 
inclosure containing a very plain and somewhat dilapidated 
monument or tombstone, telling the visitor that beneath it 
rests all that is mortal of him who, in the dark hour of our 
national birth-time, was our truest and noblest friend, one 
whose services we of to-day fail to appreciate as we ought, 
one whose grave is seldom visited by the children of those 
whom he so faithfully served in their time of need — for but 
few Americans visit the grave of Lafayette. 

Emperors in plain dress look much like other people,- at 
least so appeared those of France and Austria when riding 
about Paris. 

ELEVATED FOWLS. 

On the front of a house, seven stories from the sidewalk, 
(the house being nine stories high,) the occupants had placed 
a tasty little hen-coop, in which several well-fed fowls were 
enjoying themselves as quietly as if in a farmer's barn-yard. 

To get brick up toward the top of a high building in pro- 
cess of erection, tall ladders were placed against the wall, on 
the rounds of which several men were seated. 

A man on the ground brought the bricks and passed them 
to the man on the ladder-round nearest the ground; he raised 
them over his head and passed them to the man next above 
him on the ladder, and he to the next one above him, and 
so on to the top of the ladder, and thus the bricks reached 
the mechanic who was to use them. 



VI. 



A Prison— Wine City— Stilts— A Shell Cradle— Bay onne— 
Biarritz — Rude Farming— Ragged Soldiers — Vittoria 
and its Odors — Burgos and its Cathedral— A Cure for 
the Headache — Beautiful Monuments — An old Monastery 
— Aristocratic Convent — A Kingly Chair — Columbus — 
Cervantes — Sundry Images — Valladolid — Church Bonis' 
etc. 

Madrid, Spain, November, 1867. 
A trip through Spain, that stand-still land of the past, hav- 
ing been resolved upon, we left Paris on the morning after 
our November election. 

Our first day's journey took us to the old town of Tours, a 
lively place, with a Gothic cathedral built by the Fifth Hen- 
ry of England. In the suburbs of the place is a small chateau 
or castle, built by that persecuting bigot the Eleventh French 
Louis, now being renovated and restored for a private resi- 
dence. On the premises and near the chateau is an under- 
ground vault, like a vault under a New-York sidewalk, 
where this hateful king imprisoned one of his subjects for 
more than seventeen years. Miserable wretches were some 
of those ancient kings. The country between Paris and 
Tours is really charming, and between Tours and Bordeaux 
there is some fine land, though much of it is quite poor and 
uneven. 



42 Papers from over the Water. 

A WINE CITY. 

Bordeaux is, as most people know, a great wine mart — casks 
of wine here, boxes of wine there j here casks to put wine in, 
there staves and hoops of which to make wine-casks ; wine 
here, wine there, wine everywhere. 

We paid a visit to a huge wine vault, covering I dare not 
say how much ground. We went up long avenues of wine- 
casks, down between tiers of wine-bottles, corks this way, 
bottles that; white wine and red wine; old wine and 
new wine; cheap wine and dear wine; wine for women and 
wine for men. The very air of the vault was flavored with 
wine. 

Bordeaux contains a beautiful public garden or park, and 
in it there is a little pond full of the sauciest, fattest, j oiliest 
gold and silver fish ever seen. 

The remains of an old Roman building, looking as if it 
had once been a circus or amphitheatre, still stand, the walls 
of which now look as if they could laugh at the modern 
buildings standing in sight of them, so durable do they 
seem. 

POOR COUNTRY. 

Half of the distance between Bordeaux and Paris is 
through a low, level barren waste, covered in some places 
with a little miserable grass, in others by a few scraggy 
pines, from which the natives try to coax a little turpentine 
material. Occasionally a small half-starved flock of sheep 
are seen, watched by a shepherd on stilts, looking for all the 
world like a tall North-Carolinian on wooden legs. 

PAU. 

Pau is a finely situated town, popular with invalids, and 



Bayonne and the Bayonet. 43 

historically famous as the birthplace of the good Henry 
Fourth, the brave Harry of Navarre, and also of Bernadotte, 
late King of Sweden, who left Pau as a drummer-boy. 

The old castle in which the good King Harry was born 
is still in fair preservation; and the bed in which he " came 
into this breathing world," and the tortoise-shell cradle in 
which he was rocked, (one huge shell,) are still shown to 
visitors. 

During the great French Revolution, when all kingly 
things were under the ban, this cradle was secreted and a 
bogus one put in its place, which met the destruction in- 
tended for the true one. 

Between Pau and Bayonne, there is some good and some 
very poor country. All the cattle are of a light yellowish 
or dirty cream color, with dark briskets and darker legs, 
and rather small in size. 

The horses in this part of France are small, and at this 
season have the hair on their sides and back clipped short, 
while on the . belly and legs it is left full length, giving 
them a very singular appearance. 



BA YONNE AND THE BA YONET. 

Bayonne is a strongly fortified old French city, with but 
little to interest the traveler. 

It claims to be the birthplace of the bayonet, from the 
story that some of its defenders, becoming short of ammuni- 
tion for their guns, fastened long knives to the muzzles, and 
thus repulsed their assailants. 

A half-hour's ride took us to Biarritz, the favorite sea- 
side resort of the imperial family. 

On the way there, we passed scores of donkeys, on which 
the women rode astride, man fashion. 



44 Papers from over the Water. 

SPAIN. 

Now for Spain ; at the frontiers we changed cars, and had 
our luggage inspected. 

The Spanish railways are not of the same gauge as the 
French, and instead of running the cars alongside of each 
other on a special switch, as Americans would do, in trans- 
ferring the baggage from train to train, each trunk was car- 
ried by itself over a long platform, consuming an hour and 
a half in a job that a Yankee railroad man would have done 
in fifteen minutes. Old Spain does not move so fast as 
Young America. 

The moment the line between the two nations is crossed, 
every thing is changed. The railway officials wear different 
uniforms, speak a different language, have different money ; 
even the country itself is different. 

In France, people are lively, cheerful, pleasant. In 
Spain, morose, dark, scowling, gloomy, they act and move 
as though afraid of each other and of themselves. 

RUDE FARMING. 

In that part of Spain passed through on the way to Ma- 
drid from France, every thing is of the most ancient sort ; 
poor cultivation of the land, old buildings, decayed towns, 
primitive tools. In fact, the people in the Basque provinces 
claim Noah as their especial ancestor — a claim that seems 
too well founded, for they seem to have made no improve- 
ment since his day. » 

They have rather a poor country, and their mode of cul- 
ture does not improve it. 

They raise a little corn, which, after being planted, is 
left to take care of itself. If it can outgrow the grass, well 
and good ; if the grass gets the best of it, all the same. What 
little corn we saw had succeeded in getting up a few inches 



Tunnels — Vittoria. 45 

nearer to the sun than the grass; but it had to work so 
hard to do it, that the stalks were no bigger than a man's 
ringer. 

In breaking up land for a crop, four or five men stand in 
a row, and in concert thrust a long, wide-pronged, fork- 
like spade into the ground ; they are followed by women 
with hoes, to break up the lumps of earth. 

Their cart-wheels are of solid wood, of some two feet in 
diameter. They harrow with a little wooden-toothed harrow 
drawn by oxen. 

Probably this mode was practiced by their ancestor 
Noah. 

TUNNELS— VITTORIA 

Between Bayonne and Vittoria, the first Spanish city we 
reached, we passed through, in a five-hours ride, no less than 
thirty-seven tunnels, many of them several hundred feet in 
length. 

Vittoria is an old, decayed city, full of sewers, with grated 
openings, out of which rise the foulest smells that ever met 
human nostrils. 

In walking about its streets on a bright, moonlight eve- 
ning, we found scarcely a shop open, hardly a person to be 
seen, and, when one was seen, he was gliding along behind 
some projecting building, moving more like an assassin 
than a decent 'citizen. 

In front of an old, gloomy cathedral, there was a large fig- 
ure of the Virgin, surrounded by lighted lamps, giving it a 
strange and weird appearance. 

In the morning, there was quite a military display — horse, 
foot, and artillery — the greater part of the soldiers being mere 
boys. They wore no leather shoes, had no stockings, but 
in lieu thereof had on hemp sandals, with soles made of 
cord. 



46 Papers from over the Water. 

A lot of new recruits, or conscripts, just brought in, were 
the sorriest, most miserable-looking set of ragged wretches I 
ever saw. From the old cathedral steps" the priests walked 
down, with cigarettes in their mouths, puffing away as only 
the true Spaniard can puff. 

There were more lazy-looking men, fat and lean dogs, and 
bad smells in Vittoria than in any place of its size I ever 
visited. Glad to leave it. 

BURGOS— C A THEDRAL. 

Burgos, which claims the apostle James for its founder, 
was the next place we stopped at. This city has more mi- 
serable beggars and fat priests than Vittoria, and nearly as 
many foul sewers. These Spanish towns have very imper- 
fect drainage, hence the horrid smells from their sewers. 

Burgos has one of the grandest and most interesting 
cathedrals in Spain, if not all Europe — large, massive, elabo- 
rate in ornament, beautiful in design, impressive in style, and 
every way worth a long journey to see. Its chapels are 
numerous, and some of them large and gorgeous. Its wood- 
carvings perfectly exquisite. Its spires the most beautiful I 
ever saw, lifting up their light, airy outlines in the most 
graceful and picturesque manner imaginable. It dates 
from the thirteenth century. Cathedral lovers should see it. 

CURE FOR HEADACHE. 

In one of its fifteen chapels, by the side of a female saint, 
may be seen numerous locks of hair placed there by persons 
troubled with the headache, this disposition of their head 
covering being sure to cure that miserable complaint. In 
another part of the church there is a figure of a saint that 
sweats every Friday ; as we were there on Thursday we did 
not see the sweating. In another place may be seen a life- 



Old Monastery — Old Monk. 47 

sized figure of Christ wearing a woman's petticoat embroid- 
ered with gold; but these, to us, strange sights do not detract 
from the grand magnificence of the proud old Cathedral, 
which for so many centuries has stood unchanged amid all 
the great commotions that have shaken the world since its 
foundations were laid by the pious Ferdinand the Sainted. 

OLD MONASTERY— OLD MONK. 

Half an hour's ride from this wonderful structure is the 
monastery of the now defunct order of Carthusian monks, 
three or four of whom still breathe. This monastery con- 
tains a beautiful church, in which is one of the most elabo- 
rately ornamented marble monuments in Europe, being the 
tomb of Juan Second and his Queen, Isabella of Portugal. 
The workmanship of the robes, the delicate tracings of the 
embroideries on the vestments, the numerous illustrations of 
Bible history, the exquisite chiseling of the figures of men 
and animals, make it indeed a master-piece of art, a thing of 
beauty to a be joy in memory evermore. 

We were shown through the old monastery by an ancient, 
infirm monk, bent over by age, his body covered by a black 
mantle, his head enveloped in a white cowl, a human relic of 
by-gone power; and as we followed him along the deserted 
corridors of this once rich and potent institution, it seemed 
as if the cold November wind which howled about our heads 
was chiding us for having sacrilegiously unearthed some dead 
member of his order, so cold, so dreary, so desolate was 
every thing around us ; even the few miserable beggars that 
stood knocking at the convent door seemed to look at us in 
anger for intruding on the scene. Before we had time to 
cross the hand of the old monk with silver, he had vanished 
out of sight, leaving us to find our way out of the gates as 
best we could. 



48 Papers from over the Water. 

RICH CONVENT. 

Leaving the old monk in the solitude of his deserted home, 
we drove to the Convent of Los Huelgos, founded in the 
twelfth century by Alfonso the Eighth and his Queen, a 
daughter of England's Second Henry, and now one of the 
richest and most aristocratic convents allowed in Spain. 

Within its chapel some royal marriages have taken place, 
at which as many as thirty crowned heads were present. 
Here, too, may be seen another figure of the Saviour in em- 
broidered petticoats, a tawdry thing, fit only for a curiosity 
shop. The chapel of the nuns is separated from the church 
of the convent by heavy iron bars extending from floor to 
ceiling, two tiers of them, each bar as large as a man's wrist. 
Through this heavy double grating the officiating priest 
preaches to the nuns; at confessional, the nun sits on one 
side of a thick wall and the confessor on the other, a small 
grated and curtained loop-hole being between them. In 
this way also and through a similar loop-hole is the sacra- 
ment of communion administered to the nuns. 

A KINGLY CHAIR. 

In the old Town-Hall at Burgos may be seen the throne- 
chair occupied by the first kings of Castile, a strong wooden 
seat, looking very much like the seats made by the orange- 
dealers in Washington Market out of their empty orange- 
boxes — a little stronger, perhaps, but about the same thing 
in shape. The market-place was full of dealers in vegetables, 
the prevailing article being " red pepper." 

These Spanish towns have but few vehicles; the carrying 
is done on the backs of donkeys, hundreds of which meet 
the traveler everywhere. 

The best dressed and best fed and most cheerful-looking 



Valladolid. 49 

men are the priests. The other males are divided into two 
classes, one looking tolerably decent, with dark cloaks over 
their projecting shoulders, the other poor, starved, ragged, and 
dirty, with faded brown cloaks over their lean bodies, both 
classes puffing away at the irrepressible and ever-frequent 
cigarette. Every man in these old towns, no matter how 
poor, w r ears a cloak, part of which is thrown over the left 
shoulder and drawn up over the chin and mouth, but in 
Madrid the custom of cloak-wearing is not so prevalent. 
The women go about the streets almost bareheaded, wearing 
no head-gear but a thin vail worn on the back of the head. 

A RASCALLY HERO. 

In the Town-Hall at Burgos is a box containing the bones 
of the renowned Cid, the great hero of old Spain, a dishon- 
est rascal who cheated his creditors by leaving with them, as 
security for money he borrowed, a strong iron-bound box, 
(to be seen in the Cathedral,) containing sand, which he 
made the money-lenders believe contained large quantities 
of precious stones and metals. 

VALLADOLID. 

Valladolid, the former capital of Spain, was our next stop- 
ping place, another city full of decayed buildings, gloomy 
old churches, dirty beggars, and cut-throat hangers-on at a 
railway depot; but out of and over and above all the past, 
there rose dozens of tall chimneys, giving evidence that here 
too, as in old Alx-ia-Chapelle, the great king of the nine- 
teenth century, Steam, has obtained a foothold, and is found- 
ing a dynasty more lasting than any ever founded by any 
king of the dim past. 

Already the genial ruling of this modern king is seen in 
the erection of new houses, the renovating of old ones; 



50 Papers from over the Water. 

the laying out of public squares, the planting of shade trees 
about the barren and wind-blown streets, (all trees are set in 
ditches, in order to save what little rain falls,) and in an in- 
creasing traffic, a sure indication that the people are not past 
hope. 

To Americans, this old city is interesting as being the place 
where Ferdinand and Isabella, those patrons of our country's 
discoverer, were married, and where that same discoverer 
died. The hall in which the royal couple were married 
is a plainly furnished room some seventy or eighty feet in 
length by twenty or twenty-five in width, with a small altar 
at one end, having over it a figure of the Virgin. On the 
front of the house where the great navigator died is a small 
stone tablet, having on it a medallion head of the discoverer, 
a cornucopia, an anchor, a chart, and these words, " Aqici 
murio Colon" — " Here died Columbus." Valladolid also con- 
tains the house in which the famous Spanish writer Cervantes 
lived, and on the front of the house is a stone tablet with a 
medallion head of the novelist, bearing this inscription, "Aqui 
vivio Cervantes"—" Here lived Cervantes." 

The people of Valladolid do not see many strangers 
about their streets, and when a party is seen, staring is the 
order of the day. The cart-wheels of the peasantry have 
wooden tires, some five inches thick, made fast to the felloes 
of the wheel, with wooden pins. From the tops of houses, 
long tin water-conductors project over the sidewalk, giving 
the passer-by the benefit of a cheap shower-bath every time 
it rains. Some of the old church fronts in Valladolid are 
really grand, being covered with great and small figures, cut 
in stone ; and within, their altar-pieces are really wonderful, 
some of them being twenty to thirty feet in width and twice 
these figures in height, divided into panels, covered with 
life-sized figures in wood, painted in lifelike colors, repre* 



Valladolid. 5 1 

senting the crucifixion, the nativity, and other scenes and 
incidents of Bible history. Some of them are wonderfully 
natural in their appearance. 

The museum at Valladolid contains but few good pictures, 
but it has a wonderful collection of wood-carvings and 
statues, taken from suppressed monasteries. 



VII. 

A Poor Country — A yew's Vow and what came of 'it — Great 
Pictures — Bull Pens — Old Armor — Devotees' Offerings — 
Costly Robes — A Granite Building — Baby-House, etc. 

Madrid, Spain, November, 1867. 

From Valladolid to Madrid is eleven hours by rail, through 
a poor, miserable, sandy, rocky, barren, boulder-covered 
region, with semi-occasionally a spot of arable land. The 
road winds its way among desert sand-hills, then along the 
side of the granite-ribbed Guadarama Mountains, then 
through a tunnel of rock harder than a miser's heart, then for 
miles among a few scraggy pines with tops like an open um- 
brella ; once or twice a flock of black, starving sheep is seen 
diligently searching for a blade of grass; sometimes a few 
stinted grape-vines show themselves, trying to live, with earth 
enough for a small hill hoed around their dried-up roots. 

Once in a long distance some old town may be seen, occa- 
sionally a walled city with old towers that have stood, senti- 
nel-like, for ages. Miles on miles are traveled without see- 
ing a tree ; then, a solitary withered one is seen, looking 
down-hearted at being " all alone in the world." Then other 
miles without cattle or sheep ; not a vehicle on the miserable 
roads ; occasionally a lot of loaded donkeys following each 
other, as only donkeys can. 

At the few stations passed on the way, the signal-women 



Madrid — Royal Palace. 53 

stand statue-like, having on yellow skirts trimmed with scar- 
let, and holding in their hands a green signal-flag. 

A JEW'S VOW. 

From the railway may be seen the old walled city of Avila, 
in which there is a church built by a Jew, of whom it is said 
that, as he was passing by a certain rock, there came from it 
a monster snake, which fastened itself around his neck, and 
was near strangling him. In his great trouble he called on 
Moses and others of his faith to aid him, but the snake still 
held on. In his desperation, the choking Hebrew called on 
the Virgin for aid, vowing to build her a church if she 
would save him from the snake. The good Virgin took pity 
on the poor man, and the snake instantly let go, and dropped 
dead at his feet ; and he, like a good man, kept his word, 
and built a church on the very spot ; and there it stands to 
this day, a monument of the power of the Virgin, and of a 
Jew's fidelity to his vow. 

MADRID— ROYAL PALACE. 

Madrid is a fine, well-built city, some two or three thou- 
sand feet above the sea, surrounded with plains barren of 
trees, not far from the Guadarama Mountains, whose snow-clad 
summits are seen from the city, giving the air, at this season, a 
very chilly temperature. It has but few churches, none of 
any grandeur ; no cathedral, all attempts to build one having 
failed. Its public buildings are only so-so-ish, except the 
Royal Palace, which is said to be one of the finest in Europe. 
I saw only its exterior. Externally its appearance is quite 
grand and palace-like, being more impressive than the 
Palace of the Tuileries. When the Queen is in town, 
visitors are not admitted inside. She was " at home" (but 
not to our party) when we were in Madrid, and of course we 



54 Papers from over the Water. 

could not see the inside of the palace. Spanish etiquette is 
not plastic. 

GREAT PICTURES. 

But if Madrid lacks in cathedrals and great buildings, she 
can claim some of the grandest pictures in the world. 

The works of her Murillo, Velasquez, and other masters 
are found here in all their original beauty. 

The picture gallery of Madrid contains more real gems, 
so say the authorities, than can be found anywhere else. 
Besides the works of the Spanish masters, there are many by 
Rubens, (with his usual supply of fat women,) Titian, Rapha- 
el, Teniers, (with his Dutch houses and merry-makings,) Van 
Dyck, (portraits all breathing,) Veronese, etc., a perfect 
galaxy of the world's wonder-pieces. 

Many of these gems are in rooms most miserably lighted, 
and in positions where they can hardly be seen, but when 
seen always rivet the spectator as if chain-bound. 

For the first time, I have seen pictures that bid me stand — 
pictures that, once seen, can never be forgotten, human fig- 
ures that breathe and sigh, and laugh and weep, and dance 
and grieve ; figures that think, that speak the mute language 
of the soul; that tell of hope, of joy accomplished, of sorrow 
meekly borne; of all that makes man different from the 
animal ; pictures that the nations might battle for with more 
of right in their warfare than these old nations often have in 
their strifes for conquest. 

In a dingy old room, in an out of the way gallery, is 
Murillo's first picture. It represents a fiddling angel appear- 
ing to St. Francis. In the same room is a large picture, by 
that master, of St. Isabel, Queen of Hungary, washing lep- 
ers — a picture that can never be forgotten. The face of the 
saint is one of those sweet, holy, spiritual ones that carry 
one's mind from earth to heaven; while the disgusting misery 



The Queen's Church. 55 

of the filthy, sore-covered lepers takes one down to hell. 
But few people visit these gems. In one of the galleries 
there was not a person besides our party, and in the great 
gallery not a dozen. Such a collection in any other city of 
Europe would be attractive, but the modern Spaniards care 
but little for painted canvas. 

The old building in which these gems are kept, contains a 
very excellent collection of minerals ; also a skeleton of some 
ancient monster, as large as a small army of elephants. 

BULL PENS. 

When riding about the city, we called at the arena where 
the bull-fights take place. It is a large circular building, 
only partially roofed, capable of seating some ten thousand 
persons. We were taken into the pen where the bulls are 
placed before they are sent into the arena. These are rooms 
of some twenty feet square, with high stone walls. Over 
these pens are narrow bridges, on which the trainers stand 
to torment the bulls with barbed arrows, spears, and other 
instruments. Before the fighting-men enter the arena, they 
go into a little chapel sort of a place, kneel before a 
crucifix, and say their prayers. In a little room adjoining 
this is an infirmary, provided with litters, beds, etc., for the 
use of the wounded bull-fighters. 

THE QUEENS CHURCH. 

The church of Atocha contains a Virgin carved by 
St. Luke. This is a great "pet" of the Queen's, and to 
it her majesty presents her new-born children. She also 
attends mass in this church every Saturday evening. At 
the church-door, after passing lots of beggars, (plenty at all 
churches,) we passed an armed sentinel, the only instance of 
that kind I have seen. The figure of the Virgin, which is 



56 Papers from over the Water. 

such a favorite with the Queen, is a small dark one, placed 
on the top of the high altar, covered with a richly-embroid- 
ered cloak, given by the Queen ; a mantle being given on the 
birth of each of her children, and on the anniversary of each 
child's birthday, a different one, corresponding with the 
birthday garment of that child, is placed on the Virgin. 
These robes are made of silk and velvet, heavily embroider- 
ed with gold roses, crowns, and other emblems of royalty; 
some of the skirts are made of gold and silver thread, beauti- 
fully worked by hand, are of different colors, and cost from 
ten to fifteen thousand dollars each. 

The robe worn by her majesty on presenting a child to 
the Virgin, and on birthday anniversaries, is always left for 
her use. The grandees of Madrid, who dislike her majesty, 
rail at her for giving her old clothes to the Virgin. 

The church contains the robe worn by the Queen at the 
time her assassination was attempted in 1852, with marks of 
blood still on it. 

DEVOTEES' OFFERINGS. 

Hanging on the walls of the church are seen hundreds of 
wax arms, feet, legs, eyes, fingers, toes, hearts, kidneys, and 
other parts of the human body, also, scores of old clothes, 
crutches, shoes, etc., offerings made by devotees who 
have been cured of the different maladies symbolized by 
them, through the intercession of the patron saint of the 
church. 

SCENES IN CHURCH. 

In a glass case may be seen a very large head (in painted 
wood) of Christ ; on the top of the case is a full-sized sil- 
ver shoe. In another part of the church is a life-size wax 
figure of Christ in a glass coffin, and near that, another glass 
coffin, containing a full-sized figure of the Virgin in a gold- 



Scenes in Madrid. 57 

embroidered silk dress, a gilded crown on her head, and a 
golden sceptre in her hand. Mass was being celebrated 
during our visit, and it was strange to see a devotee kiss the 
stones of the church-floor. Many females sit on the church- 
floor, while others kneel. 

SCENES IN MADRID. 

In front of the royal palace is a pretty little square, around 
which the children's wagons are drawn by ponies, goats, and 
sheep, the only place in which I have seen mutton in har- 
ness. 

From the palace terrace a fine view may be had of the 
valley below the city, in which acres and acres of drying 
clothes may be seen, giving the valley the appearance of a 
snow-field. 

Only one Duke here has the right to put his coat-of-arms 
on the front of his house or palace. Others display theirs 
on the rear. 

In many of the passage-ways leading to the dwellings, 
tailors sit at work in little criblike boxes; and in many of 
the narrow streets, cobblers are at work, busy as bees. . 

The houses of Madrid have all the lower windows barred 
and grated with iron, as if afraid of somebody. 

In the streets, I saw a woman using the stumps of arms 
for sewing and knitting, having no hands. 

Throw a cigar-stump in the street, and some old woman 
will pick it up as soon as it leaves your fingers. Beggars are 
plenty. They are great patrons of cigarettes. 

The royal stable contains a hundred or more of rather in- 
different horses ; a few good ones. All have their names on 
their stalls ; among others may be seen Radical, Socialasta, 
and Puritan. Some of the carriages are very fine; among 
the old ones may be seen the covered one used by Crazy 



58 Papers from over the Water. 

Jane, (grandmother of Philip the Second,) in which she car- 
ried the body of her dead husband — the faithless, beautiful 
Philip — from place to place. 

The armory contains a few specimens of very fine fire- 
arms, and an extensive display of armor, swords, etc. ; 
among others is the suit worn by Columbus. It weighs 
forty-one pounds, and reaches only to the knee. 

That worn by Charles the Fifth is quite large and massive ; 
while that of his son, Philip the Second, is very small, the 
parts covering the legs being barely large enough to protect 
a Yankee bean-pole. 

The naval museum contains some beautiful models of 
ships, some ancient and some modern ; among others, a 
pretty little monitor, looking as independent as the heaviest 
three-decker. 

A portrait of Columbus hangs on the wall, and under it 
the old chart he sailed by, when he set his ships' prows to- 
ward the setting sun. 

On a table stands a model of his old ship — a queer, Chi- 
nese-junk sort of high-stern craft, that looks as if the first 
breath of wind might have capsized it. 

The artillery museum contains a fine display of guns, old 
and new. In this museum is a fine old tent, used by 
Charles the Fifth, also by Ferdinand and Isabella, in their 
campaigns. Part of the robe worn by the renowned Cortez 
is also shown. 

These old museums of Spain contain many tilings of in- 
terest to us of the New World — more than I have ability to 
describe. 

A GRAXITE BUILDIXG. 

Of course, we visited the Escorial, that granite monument 
of the grim Philip. 

Think of a granite building, covering several acres of 



A Granite Building. 59 

ground, having twenty-seven hundred windows, twelve thou- 
sand doors, fifteen cloisters, (for monks and priests,) sixteen 
court-yards, forty altars, eighty-six staircases, three thousand 
feet of fresco painting, eighty-nine fountains, and more miles 
of corridors, passage-ways, galleries, and halls than the best 
horse in America could travel over between " sun and sun," 
and all granite, nothing but granite, over head and under 
• foot, on the right and on the left; granite walls, stairs, 
arches, curves, angles, columns, balustrades ; a granite dome, 
three hundred feet high, granite to its cap-stone, granite tur- 
rets, towers, vaults; huge blocks of the hardest, grayest 
granite ever piled up, and all put together in the most per- 
fect manner. 

Imagine the highest part of the Palisades near New- York 
bored and tunneled, and drilled, and arched, and angled, and 
curved, and doored, and turreted ; filled with chapels, altars, 
staircases, galleries, pictures, statues, tombs, cloisters, palaces, 
fortresses, crucifixes, all and every thing that a powerful, bigot- 
ed, educated, despotic, earnest, and energetic sovereign could 
form into a great, gloomy, cold compound of castle, monas- 
tery, and palace, and you have a faint idea of what the Es- 
corial is. Some of the rooms in the palace part are wonders 
of taste and real elegance, fitted up with the most gorgeously 
colored tapestries, floors inlaid with fancy woods, in every 
room, curious old clocks, costly marbles, vases, etc. 

Adjoining the high altar of the church is a little marble 
room, in which Philip the Second used to sit, and, through a 
sliding window, witness the celebration of mass. As I 
looked through that window on the magnificent fittings of 
the grand old altar, the voice of a chanting monk came 
echoing along the massive arches and around the great 
granite columns, seeming to say, in soft, mellow tones, 
" Heretic, disturb not the rest of those who sleep beneath ;" 



60 Papers from over the Water. 

for under this great altar is the marble-arched vault in which 
is placed all that remains of the old Spanish monarchs — a 
dark, gloomy sepulchre, down into which we entered, each 
person bearing a lighted candle. 

By the side of the little room in which Philip sat to wit- 
ness mass (and in which he died) is another small room 
which he used as a workshop and office. It contains his 
old leather-bottomed chair, a couple of stools that he used 
to rest his lame legs on, a little work-bench, and a table and 
chair for his secretary. 

Take it all in all, the Escorial is a marvel too great to be 
described in a letter like this. 

A BABY PALACE. 

A short distance from this massive pile of architectured 
granite is a small building, called the " Casa del Infant," a 
baby-house, built for Don Gabriel, a Spanish prince. 

Though small, it is one of the most beautiful little houses 
ever seen, full of pretty things, of gold, of silver, of glass, of 
ivory, of porcelain ; walls covered with embroidered silk ; 
floors of choice fancy woods, beautifully inlaid. 

In one room, there are three hundred and sixty-five framed 
specimens of white, raised or embossed porcelain, comprising 
figures of men, animals, trees, plants, flowers, etc. ; and in 
another room scores of ivory carvings of the same sort of 
subjects, the leaves of some of these plants in ivory being al- 
most as thin and transparent as a spider's web — perfect little 
marvels of patient industry and consummate skill. 

As we left this little child's palace, the setting sun burnished 
the adjacent snow-capped mountains with rays of crimson- 
tinted gold, giving the scene an appearance of beauty and 
grandeur seldom seen. 



VIII. 



Sunday Sport— A Bull-Fight. 



Madrid, Spain, November, 1867. 
Desiring to see a bull-fight, I provided myself with a ticket, 
of which the following is a copy : 



PLAZA DE TOROS. 



m 

O 

C 

H 



FUNGION DE NOVILLOS. 



PALCO NUM. 5. 

TABLONCILLO. 

PRECIO : CUATRO REALES. 



I passed between two rows of guards, having muskets 
with fixed bayonets, and found my seat. 

The arena or ring is over two hundred feet in diameter ; 
around it is a strong fence, about five and a half feet high. 
Some eighteen inches above the level of the arena, on the 
inside of the fence, and against it, is a step running the entire 
circuit of the ring, placed there to aid the men in jumping 
the fence when pursued by the bull. Some six feet beyond 
this fence is another one, a little higher ; and back of this are 
the stone seats, rising amphitheatre fashion, to the covered 
boxes occupied by the higher classes. 



62 Papers from over the Water. 

At convenient distances, gates are placed in the first fence 
— that is, the one next the ring — which, on opening, turn out 
across the space formed by the first and second fences. 
These gates are thus arranged for the purpose of turning the 
bull back into the ring or arena when he jumps the first 
fence, as he sometimes does. 

This space between these two fences is a favorite spot for 
the young men to stand, and thrust sticks into the bull when- 
ever they can. 

The seats were full of people — perhaps ten thousand men, 
women, boys, girls, and babies in their mothers' arms. 

At a signal, two or three sickly looking fellows in uni- 
form ride into the ring, march slowly around it, and go out. 
Another signal, a blast on a bugle, and in come the gayly 
clad wretches that are to tease and torment the bull. An- 
other blast on the bugle, and then enter three or four poor, 
miserable old horses, (to instantly kill which would be kind- 
ness,) with one eye blinded, ridden by men having their legs 
cased in iron, to prevent their being hurt by the bull or by 
the horses falling on them. Each of these mounted horse- 
men with iron-clad legs has a long stick looking like a bean- 
pole, which he carries on the blind side of his horse, for the 
purpose of thrusting at the bull, but which is so seldom needed 
that it appears to be carried more for show than use. 

Ten gaudily dressed fellows, mounted and on foot, place 
themselves in front of the manager of the delightful sports 
that are to follow, make obeisance, scatter themselves about 
the ring — the bugle again sounds, a gate is opened, and in 
bounds a fine-looking dark-brown bull, with beautiful head 
and horns. (These Spanish bulls do not have the short, 
horizontal horns and thick, heavy, curly necks of American 
bulls, but the horns are longer, tapering, and stand up, 



A Bull-Fight 63 

spreading apart as they grow, more like the horns of the 
working-oxen of New-England.) 

He is smarting with pain from the barb and spear wounds 
he has received in the pen ; his shoulders are bloody ; he is 
frightened, mad with anger; he passes a horse conveniently 
placed near the gate for him to attack, dives at one of the 
tormentors who bears a bright-colored cloth, or rather dives 
at the cloth, the cowardly fellow that holds it before the ani- 
mal taking good care to keep his worthless carcass out of 
the way of the bull's horns. These fellows have different 
high-sounding names, as Picador, Bandarillo, Matadore, etc. ; 
but I shall drop all these and simply call them tormentors, 
teasers, etc. I shall not even style them bull-fighters, for 
they don't fight the bull at all, not one of them. 

Another red rag is held before the bull at arm's length by 
another tormentor ; the bull dives at it, fastens his horns in 
it; tormentor drops it, runs for the fence; bull after him; 
tormentor jumps the fence; bull attacks other red rags; 
other tormentors jump the fence. The crowd don't like 
such tame sport. A blast of the bugle, and another tor- 
mentor enters with gayly trimmed barbed arrows, about three 
feet long; these he is to place in the shoulders of the bull, to 
increase his rage and make him attack the horses. He ap- 
proaches the animal from the side, don't face him like a 
man, and while the attention of the bull is drawn to the 
red rag of another tormentor, succeeds, after several attempts, 
in planting the barbs in the bull's shoulder, whereat the 
crowd shout their approval; bull rushes round the ring 
with the arrows in his shoulder, bleeding as he goes ; sees 
one of the old horses, (mounted by iron-clad legs;) poor old 
horse can't see bull, for the blinded side of these fiery steeds 
is always kept to the animal. Bull pitches at the old horse ; 
disembowels him ; tumbles him over on to iron-clad legs, (any 



64 Papers from over the Water. 

boy could throw him down, so weak is he from poverty of 
flesh ;) the crowd shout ; tormentors draw near with red rags 
to attract bull's attention, for fear he may pitch into iron- 
clad legs ; legs are pulled from under horse, iron-clads and 
all ; horse is lifted up ; iron-clad legs go out of the ring, 
limping; another iron-clad takes his horse, and the sport 
goes on, but it is too tame to suit the crowd of men, wo- 
men, boys, girls, and babies in arms ; so the bugle is sounded, 
and another gayly dressed tormentor enters, and, after more 
attempts, and more aid by other tormentors with red rags, 
plants two more barbs in the bull's shoulders, to the great 
delight of the crowd. Bull gets more angry, chases other 
red rags; other tormentors leap the fence; two more barbs, 
are planted in the bull's shoulders ; he pitches into another 
old horse, rips open his belly, drags out his entrails, throws 
him on to iron-clad legs; red rags again come to the rescue of 
iron-clad legs; horse is killed; but this bull is too tame to suit 
the crowd, and the bull-killer is called in to dispatch. him, 
which, after several attempts, he does, by thrusting a long, 
keen lance into his neck near the shoulder. 

The first horse wounded by the bull has his entrails pushed 
back into his body, and is taken out of the ring, to be 
brought back again for another bull to finish. The first bull 
is removed ; the tormentors, with red rags, take their places ; 
the iron-clad legs straddle other fiery steeds with one eye 
blinded; the gate again opens, and in comes a fine, dark 
yellow bull, with a barb in his shoulder, the blood coloring 
his handsome coat, his eyes flashing anger. With a bound 
he knocks over old horse number one ; crowd shouts ; evi- 
dently there is fire in this fellow ; the tormentors with red 
rags attract his attention ; he scatters them in all directions, 
they leap the inner fence, so does the bull ; the ten thousand 
shout ; the crowd in the circle between the two fences run 



A Bull-Fight 65 

and jump as only Spanish cowards can. The gates are open- 
ed across the inner circle ; the bull's flight is checked, and 
he is turned once more into the ring ; rushes madly at horse 
number two, (number one having died,) who stands with his 
blind side toward him and with his entrails protruding, (the 
one disemboweled by bull number one,) throws him on to iron- 
clad legs number two ; the crowd shout, the boys yell, the wo- 
men wave their handkerchiefs ; the tormentors with red rags 
draw near; the bull chases them; they drop their rags, 
leap the fences; so does the bull. More shouting; the crowd 
in that circular space run again ; the gates are thrown open 
across the track of the bull, and he enters the ring again, to 
leap the fence and drive out the brave young men five 
times more, to the great delight of the ten thousand. 

After leaping that high fence seven times, and killing three 
horses and wounding others, he begins to lag a little. The 
bugle sounds, the wretches with barbs enter, and the bull is 
pierced by four of the long arrows, to the great pleasure of the 
crowd. Then he rushes madly about the ring, tears red rags 
to pieces, and pitches into two dead horses ; tears off their 
saddles and throws them into the air; crowd shouts. He 
drives at horse number three ; horse is whipped and goaded 
into a limping attempt at galloping across the arena; the 
bull chases him; the crowd yell with delight; the horse is 
knocked over; is gored; handkerchiefs flutter with glee; 
the children scream with delight; tormentors with red rags 
remove iron-clad legs from the fury of the bull ; he gores 
the horse ; crowd clap hands ; bull chases the teasers ; they 
leap the fence ; he can't, he is too tired, has lost too much 
blood; he walks around the ring, holding his nose on top of 
the fence. Brave young men next the fence thrust sticks in 
his face; poke his sides; more barbs are thrust into his 
shoulders. Horse number three can't get up for iron-clad 



66 Papers from over the Water. 

legs to mount again ; gayly dressed teasers thrash him with 
sticks as big as a man's thumb ; pound him over the head, 
on the body, on the legs, twist his tail almost off, kick him — 
all in vain, the. poor creature can't get up ; bull drives them 
out of the ring. Dying horse lifts up his poor old head, looks 
imploringly around for help as pitifully as only a suffering 
horse can look, but no pity in that crowd of human devils, 
no mercy in that ring, except with the bull, for he utterly re- 
fuses to approach him again. Two, four, six, eight barbs are in 
bull's shoulders; he arouses a little, shows a little anger at 
the red rags, drops on his knees, begs for mercy ; torment- 
ors get him on his feet again ; he tries to chase them ; he 
can't. The gayly dressed killer comes, and after making sev- 
eral efforts, aided by the tormentors with the red rags, who 
attract the bull's attention, succeeds in planting the merciful 
steel in his neck, and he dies; the gates open; mules come 
in ; the dead bull and the three dead horses are drawn out ; 
a rope is placed around the neck of the horse who is not yet 
dead, and the mules draw him out, kicking as he goes, to 
the great pleasure of the ten thousand, who clap their hands 
and shout with joy. 

Bull number three is introduced with the same bugle-calls, 
and tormentors, and teasers, and iron-clad legs; but, as he is 
a tame fellow, only knocking over two or three old horses, not 
goring any of them — not letting out their entrails — not 
jumping the fence — in fact, showing no pluck, he is soon 
dispatched by the killer, and bull number four enters. And 
as he, too, is rather tame, don't gore any old horses, don't 
jump the fence, the bugle sounds, and three two-legged devils 
lead in, or rather are pulled in by, three devils on four legs 
in the shape of monster bull-dogs and huge bloodhounds, 
who, in their haste to attack the poor bull, pull and try to 
break the thongs that hold them. 



A Bull-Fight. 67 

In a moment they are loose. With a silent bound, they 
fasten on the poor beast — at his throat, at his nose, at his 
hams. The bull throws one dog in the air, tramples on 
another; the crowd shout; the two tossed and trampled 
dogs are up again ; again they fasten their deadly teeth in 
his flesh ; this time, for certain, the bull tries to run with 
them; the dogs are too heavy; he can't carry them; he 
struggles ; the crowd yell ; the bull tries to shake them off; 
he can't; the dogs' teeth are too deeply imbedded in his 
flesh ; they draw blood, they bite deeper; he grows weak, 
gets on to his knees, begs for mercy. Human-devils on two 
legs have no more mercy than dog-devils on four legs ; the 
dogs are not taken off; the bull dies. 

The crowd are pleased ; they clap their hands and shout ; 
tormentors, teasers, and iron-clad legs make their obeisance 
to the managing devil, and the sport is over. 

This is what the Spanish people call a " bull-fight." A more 
absurd misnomer could not be applied to any thing. Fight- 
ing implies a conflict between persons or creatures some- 
what equal ; but there is no fighting here, unless the poor 
bull's efforts to defend himself from the three great dogs can 
be called a fight ; but surely that was no fight. Three to 
one, where either of the three is more than a match for the 
one, is no fight at all. 

The tonnentors with red rags don't fight the bull ; they 
hold their rags before him at arm's length, keeping them- 
selves to one side of the animal as he dives at the rags ; and 
even when he hits a rag, these gayly dressed cowards drop it, 
run, and get over the fence. The red rags can't fight ; tor- 
mentors with iron-clad legs sit quietly on their poor old 
horses, holding their bean-poles harmlessly on the blind 
side ; they make no attempt at fighting the bull — not they. 

The killer who plants the lance in the bull's neck don't 



68 Papers from over the Water. 

fight; he watches his opportunity to plant his steel while 
the bull is attracted by the red rags of the tormentors. There 
is nothing like a fight at any time. The bull would fight if 
he had a chance, but the tormentors, and iron-clads, and 
killers, and bull-dogs, and bloodhounds give him no oppor- 
tunity for a fight, nor any show for his life — none whatever. 
The whole affair is simply and purely a bloody, cruel, 
barbarous method of murdering poor old horses and worry- 
ing bulls to death — nothing more, nothing less, 



IX. 



Toledo, its Narrow Streets and Great Church — A Stone made 
Hollow by Kissing — Costly Robes — Cordova and its 
Mosque — Church of a Thousand Columns — Bull's Head 
— Bridles without Bits — How Spaniards zuarm their 
Rooms — Olive Orchards — Seville, its Beggars — Moorish 
Gardens — Narrow Streets — Wonderful Cathedral — Pig 
Dressing — Cure for Sore Eyes, etc. 

Seville, Spain, December, 1867. 

On our way south from Madrid we halted at the old wall- 
ed city of Toledo, standing sentry-like on a hill ; a very 
ancient place, with many of its streets so narrow that vehi- 
cles can not enter; some not more than four feet in width, 
and the broadest mere alleys, all crooked and hilly; so 
crooked and narrow are they that on leaving before daylight 
in the morning, we had to walk a long -distance to an open 
square for the omnibus, the streets being so dark and narrow 
that it could not be driven to the hotel. 

It is a dirty place, its alleys, streets, and cramped squares 
giving abundant evidence that the virtue of cleanliness is 
not cultivated by the people. It has but few sights worth 
seeing ; no museum : but what it lacks in this it more than 
makes up in its great cathedral, one of those grand old tem- 
ples that the past erected for the generations to worship in 



70 Papers from over the Water. 

and wonder at ; one of those stupendous buildings that awe 
the spectator. 

It dates back to the sixth century; is full of ancient 
things, tombs, pictures, (all in bad light;) grotesque figures 
in stone and wood; queer old altar-pieces; mementoes of 
superstitious reverence, etc. Among other- things is a cha- 
pel, devoted to St. Lucia, the patron saint of oculists, the 
front and sides of which are covered with wax eyes, offer- 
ings of those whose eyes have been healed by the influence of 
that good saint. The Chapel of the Virgin is on the very spot 
where she alighted on her visit to St. Idelfonso, when, on 
passing her statue she embraced it, and invested her cham- 
pion (an early advocate of the dogma of the Immaculate 
Conception) with a robe. 

The stone on which the Virgin alighted is placed in a jas- 
per column, and has been kissed by believers till it is hol- 
lowed out like an oblong saucer. The bas-reliefs and bron- 
zes about the high altar are really wonderful ; in fact, the en- 
tire building, outside and in, is worth a long journey to see. 

RICH WARDROBE. 

The wardrobe of the Virgin is said to exceed in magnifi- 
cence and value that of' any queen now living ; one of her 
gold and silver mantles having on it over seventy thousand 
pearls, and her crown, made three hundred years ago, cost- 
ing five thousand pounds, (in those cheap days,) without the 
pints of costly jewels and precious stones with which it is 
covered. This is one robe on an inanimate figure — outside 
of the building in which it is shown, hundreds of animate beg- 
gars are seen w r ith scarcely any robes at all, poor, lean, dirty, 
ragged creatures, without mind, intelligence, or any thing to 
raise them above the level of the brute. 



Cordova and Scenes Therein. 71 

On the front wall of the Church of the Kings, scores of iron 
chains are seen hanging, chains worn by captives taken 
in battle, and presented to the church in gratitude for their 
deliverance from captivity. 

Toledo also contains several buildings that were once Jew- 
ish synagogues and Moorish mosques, but which have been 
converted into churches. Among them is one of Moor- 
ish architecture, in front of which, so the story runs, as 
the Cid's horse was one day passing it, he stopped and reve- 
rently knelt down, upon which the church wall in front of 
him opened, and Christ's image was found in a niche, with 
the lighted lamps in front of it that had been placed there 
by the Goths hundreds of years previous, the oil put in the 
lamps by that highly cultivated people not then having 
burnt out. 

CORDOVA AND SCENES THEREIN. 

From Toledo we traveled to Cordova, the Cordova of old, 
a city more pleasant than dirty Toledo. Here we had our 
first view of oranges, lemons, dates, and palms, etc., growing 
in the open air. This city claims the first street that was 
paved in Europe. We were shown through it. It is very 
narrow, paved with cobble-stones in the centre, while a nar- 
row flagging borders the sides. The Cathedral of Cordova 
was once a Moorish mosque, and its thousand stone columns, 
(all with different capitals,) with horse-shoe arches resting on 
them, bewilder the spectator and excite his wonder. Cordo- 
va with its Moorish style of houses and their pretty court- 
yards looks cheerful, but does not contain much besides its 
cathedral and a few Moorish ruins to interest the traveler. 
In the Club House there may be seen, carefully preserved in 
a glass case, the head of a bull who in one day killed eigh- 



72 Papers from over the Water. 

teen horses and one man. Pity the figures had not been 
reversed. 

In the market-place were great piles of the largest white 
onions I ever saw ; most of them would measure six inches 
in diameter. A nice little tidbit was for sale, in the shape 
of fowls' entrails, roasted and rolled up in sweet-looking pack- 
ages, resembling twisted sticks of greasy charcoal — good food 
for the tormentors that worry bulls to death and help to 
murder old horses in the bull-rings. Passing a little shop, a 
mere hole in the side of a house, w r e saw a man sitting at a 
turning-lathe, working in wood. 

The motive power of the lathe was a bow-string worked 
by the right hand, while with the left hand and right foot he 
guided his cutting tool. 

BRIDLES WITHOUT BITS. 

Many horses and mules in this part of Spain are driven 
without bits, the guiding gear being an iron band placed on 
the animal's nose, with projecting eyes or hooks on the sides, 
in which the reins are fastened. 

There is no timber or forest to be seen. Buildings all of 
stone or brick ; stone or tile roofs and floors. 

HOW TO KEEP WARM. 

No fire-places or stoves in the dwellings. When the 
weather is chilly, a few embers made of charred twigs are 
placed in a large brass dish, in shape like an American milk- 
pan, with a huge flange or rim. This is placed in the mid- 
dle of the room on the floor, and the people sit round it 
wrapped in shawls and cloaks. 

At some of the best hotels, even this poor substitute for a 
good fire can not be had, and travelers suffer with cold, as the 
nights are quite chilly, when at midday it is quite warm. 



No Vehicles. 73 

Aside from lack of means to warm their rooms, the Span- 
ish hotels are quite comfortable. Their beds are clean and 
tidy ; often have the sheets trimmed with lace. Their em- 
ployees generally attentive, though all smoke, smoke, smoke 
their everlasting cigarettes. 

NO VEHICLES. 

The scarcity of vehicles in this country is very noticeable, 
scarcely any carts or wagons being used for work purposes ; 
every thing is carried on the backs of donkeys. 

They carry vegetables, dirt, stone, water, brick, fruit, fur- 
niture, men, women, and children : in fact, almost every thing 
that can be put in baskets or bags or boxes is thus transport- 
ed, and to a stranger it is quite amusing to see these patient 
creatures follow each other by the dozen, score, or hundred, 
each one with his great load ; and when loaded with bundles 
of straw or green bushes as they often are, nothing can be 
seen of them but their little feet, pattering along over the 
pavements as patiently as if they were never kicked and 
pounded as none but Spanish donkeys are. 

Between Cordova and Seville, the land is generally good 
and nearly all under cultivation. In one field I saw over 
thirty ox teams following each other with plows, or rather 
rooting tools ; for plowing as we understand it is not prac- 
ticed hereabout. The land is merely scratched, about as 
deep as a pig in an American forest roots for nuts. The rail- 
way is lined with hedges of cactus and a large plant re- 
sembling the century. 

The horses of Spain are not very handsome ; have large 
bellies ; carry their tails straight down, close to their legs, just 
as a motherless colt does when he turns tail to a cold rain. 

The olive orchards look very pretty. At a distance the 
olive-tree looks like an American apple-tree; but on nearing 



74 Papers from over the Water. 

it, the resemblance ceases. The leaves are much smaller, 
darker in colcr, have a glossy surface, and the trunks are 
scraggy. 

SEVILLE AND ITS SIGHTS. 

We arrived at Seville on Thursday, our Thanksgiving, 
and in honor of that American institution had a roast turkey 
and other good things — a dozen or so of Americans, mostly 
New-Yorkers, surrounding the table. 

Seville is a very cozy city, with clean streets, white-washed 
houses, with pretty court-yards, paved with colored marble, 
and ornamented with plants, orange and lemon trees. 

The houses here, as in other Spanish cities, have their win- 
dows barred and grated with heavy irons even their semi- 
nary windows are barred to the top story. 

Some of our party wanted to see the house once occupied 
by the notorious Don Juan ; so we went to the place indicat- 
ed in the guide-book, but the house could not be found". In 
reply to inquiries as to which house the rascal lived in, we 
were told that there was no such person living in the neigh- 
borhood — in fact, had never been heard of; whereat the 
"house-hunters" became disgusted, and to console them- 
selves went to the convent or monastery where he died. That 
was some satisfaction. 

Before returning to the hotel, we passed the shop once oc- 
cupied by " The Barber of Seville;" but he was not in— had 
been absent some time; his return was uncertain; so we 
missed seeing him. Beggars abound in Seville ; here, there, 
everywhere; at the church-doors, in the churches, around 
the stairs, in front of the chapels, at the fountains, in the 
squares — indeed, we pass between rows of them in the court- 
yard entrance to our hotel; in fact, the numbers seem to in- 
crease as we travel south. 



Seville and its Sights. 75 

Seville is a closely built city. Its street s are narrow, 
houses high to keep the sun out of them, " keeping cool" 
being the most important thing to do in this climate. 
From the tower of the cathedral the city presents nothing 
but whitewashed houses, interspersed with a few old churches 
and some pretty little squares surrounded by orange and 
lemon trees, under which the natives sit and puff their cigar- 
ettes, beggars and all. 

Water is supplied by peddlers, who carry it in jars and kegs 
on the backs, or rather the sides, of donkeys, for the huge 
racks or frames in which the jars are carried cover the animal's 
sides, while the lazy owner often rides on the back of the 
patient creature. 

At the fountains, one may see scores of these animals be- 
ing loaded with water-jugs, and in front of the houses others 
stand, while the empty jar is brought out and the full one 
taken in. 

This method of getting water prevails in this part of the 
world. The water is stored in large earthen jars, such as 
the forty thieves were secreted in, each jar being quite 
large enough for a man to get into. 

But few of the stores or shops have windows, the open 
doorway supplying all the light they have. 

An apothecary shop has its doors closed. By the sides 
thereof are little windows with a sliding sash, which the cus- 
tomer pushes aside to give his orders to the shopkeeper, and 
by means of which he returns the thing wanted. 

The picture gallery contains some choice works by Mu- 
rillo, (Seville was his home,) and in a little, dark, gloomy 
church attached to a hospital are two of the great master's 
best pictures, " Moses Smiting the Rock" and " The Miracle 
of the Loaves and Fishes," both placed so high upon the 



76 Papers from over the Water. 

church-walls as to be almost out of sight, though enough can 
be seen to show the great artist's genius. 

There are many of his pictures to be found in the churches 
here, but all in dark and obscure places. These people seem 
to have but little taste for art ; cock-fighting, murdering poor 
old horses, and tormenting bulls to death being more to their 
liking. 

MOORISH PALACE. 

Near the cathedral is the "Alcazar," a portion of a once 
grand Moorish mosque, founded some seven hundred years 
ago. It consists of the usual highly-ornamented, stuccoed, 
marble-floored rooms, halls, and corridors peculiar to that 
class of buildings, most of which have been spoiled in ap- 
pearance by the hands of those who drove the Moors out 
of Spain — men who did not understand and could not appre- 
ciate the luxurious taste of the vanquished. Some royal 
marriages and kingly murders have taken place in it — mur- 
ders of treachery, of hate, of ambition and royal jealousy. 

Under a portion of the palace are the remains of the 
Royal Baths, dark, stone-walled, and marble-floored. 

In one of these a mistress of Don Pedro the Cruel used to 
bathe in presence of the king and his courtiers, each of whom 
showed his gallantry by drinking of the water as she left the 
bath. The gardens of this old palace are quite pretty, being 
full of flowers, orange-trees loaded with golden fruit, choice 
plants, sweet lemon-trees, bananas, palms, etc., but the old 
walls around them, and the old fountains in them, speak 
more of the past than of the present. 

One can not visit these old places, once so full of all that 
life is made of, but now so desolate, without feelings of sad- 
ness mixed with admiration. 

Women sweep the streets with little short brushes made of 



A Grand Cathedral \ 77 

grass, without handles, stooping over almost to the ground 
to do their work. 

While at dinner at the public table of the hotel, a Spanish 
gentleman (not a guest of the house) sat down to visit a 
guest, took out his cigar, and puffed away till dinner was over, 
notwithstanding there were several American ladies at the 
table. Rather a queer custom. 

In the markets, vegetables and fruits are always sold by 
weight, never by measure. 

A GRAND CATHEDRAL. 

On entering the Cathedral of Seville for the first time, the 
visitor is appalled, struck dumb with wonder, overwhelmed, 
feels perfectly insignificant, stops, looks, takes another step 
or two, halts, looks up toward the stone-vaulted ceiling, 
moves again, again stops, gazes at the massive stone columns 
that support the roof; his eyes dilate, his mind expands ; he 
looks at the stained glass window through which the sun is 
forming all the colors of the rainbow ; he walks slowly around 
one of the great stone columns, wonders how far it is around 
it, looks up to its top, tries to guess how high it is, looks at a 
moving figure at the other end of the nave, wonders whether 
it is a man or child, moves again, looks at the great organs, 
would like to know how many yards it is from the marble 
floor to their tops, so very tall and- steeple-like are they, again 
he moves on, begins to walk toward the far off part of the 
building ; he walks, and looks and walks, and turns around 
to see the door at which he entered ; it is lost in the distance ; 
he too is lost in wonder. 

This cathedral is one of the most magnificent in Europe, 
ranking very near to the great St. Peter's of Rome. 

We spent a long time, in fact several long times, in visit- 
ing it, looking into its chapels, examining its pictures, seeing 



7 8 Papers from over the Water. 

the gorgeous robes of its priests, looking at its tons of silver 
and pounds of gold, and measures of precious stones. 

The chapels were not open; but on furnishing the person 
in charge with a silver key, (one that has locked and unlocked 
many another door for weal or woe,) we gained access to all 
we desired to see. As the heavy irpn gates groaned and sway- 
ed on their rusty hinges, they reminded one more of prison- 
gates than of the sanctuary. . But this is the custom here. 
Every thing is barred and bolted, and spiked and grated, even 
the minds of the people. The royal chapel was built to con- 
tain the bodies of royal personages. In the sides are recesses 
containing royal tombs covered with cloth of gold, on which 
are emblazoned the royal arms ; the walls and ceilings of the 
recesses being covered with velvet, on which the royal arms 
are also seen. 

The front of the high altar in this chapel is of silver, with a 
large cloth of gold, on which figures of men are elegantly 
embossed. Just over this altar is a figure of the Virgin, with 
St. Ferdinand's crown on her head, and over her is placed a 
large silver canopy, having in it a massive emerald, hanging 
directly over the crown. 

In front of the altar there hangs a very large silver lamp. 
Under the altar are the remains of St. Ferdinand, which are 
carried in solemn procession about the city on certain days, 
on which occasions the ivory crucifix used by the saint is also 
carried. 

TOBA CCO. 

The Spanish government have a very large tobacco factory 
here, employing some four thousand females. It is a very 
large building, some six hundred feet square. It turns out 
vast quantities of snuff, cigars, and cigarettes. The motive 
power for grinding is purely Spanish — mules. The walls of 



Tobacco. 79 

the vast rooms in which the women work are covered with 
their out-door garments, all changing their clothes on going 
to work. 

Among the operatives were many children, and by the side 
of many of the elder females were little boxes and baskets, each 
with a fat, black-eyed little " babby," while in other boxes 
might be seen pet dogs. 

At the head of the staircase, which all have to ascend to 
reach their work, there is a picture of the Virgin, surrounded 
with flowers and other offerings, made by the pious ones 
among the girls. 

Large numbers of the females employed in this concern 
are pure gypsies, with the hair and black, fiery eye peculiar 
to the Spanish branch of that strange people. 

Passing through one of the suburban streets, we saw men 
dressing a large pig just slaughtered. Instead of scalding the 
carcass, as is done in America, the hair and bristles were 
singed off, just as a cook singes a chicken. 

I suppose this is done to save the skin, which is used as a 
cask to carry wine in. 



X. 



Seville to Granada via Malaga — Orange, Fig, and Palm Trees 
— Beggars — A Cemetery — Impudent People — Raisin Girls 
— A Stage Ride — Cruel Drivers — Armed Guards — Peculiar 
Scenery — Wine-Shop Sign — Archbishop, etc., 

Granada, Spain, December, 1867. 

From Seville, whence I last wrote you, to Malaga via 
Cordova, is a long day's ride, through a very fine country, 
occasionally broken into by wild mountain scenery, cut and 
gullied by great gorges and deep ravines. 

As we approached Malaga, we rode for miles through or 
ange orchards, loaded to the very ground with golden fruit, 
and other miles through groves of fig-trees, now destitute 
of foliage. Fig-tree, at this season look like small American 
butternut-trees. 

Occasionally a tall palm, with its beautiful crest of green, 
w r ould smile complacently on its orange and fig bearing 
neighbors, and sometimes would shake its datey fruit boast- 
ingly over their heads. 

Malaga is on a small bay well sheltered from the winds 
of the Mediterranean, and is flanked on the north by a range 
of very high hills, and back of these are great mountains. 

The loading and unloading of vessels is done by lighters, 
the waters of the bay being too shalloAv to admit of their lay- 



A Cemetery — Beggars. Si 

ing alongside the little quays, which, unlike bur wharves, 
slope down to the water. 

The city does not contain much to interest the traveler. 

A CEMETERY. 

On a hillside just out of the city there is a burying-ground 
for Protestants and strangers. As we rambled through it, we 
saw the graves of a few Americans who had died in this far- 
off land, away from home and friends. But it matters not 
where the dead sleep, whether on the shores of the blue 
Mediterranean or in the valleys of the land of the setting sun, 
the judgment-day will find all. To be the right man 
in the right place when alive is the great duty ; that done, 
no matter where the dead lie down. 

The tombstones in the cemetery are lettered red and black ; 
the first letter of a name or sentence being in red. Some of 
the graves are covered with cement, are raised some inches 
above the ground, and painted red, giving them the appear- 
ance of stained pine coffins. Many graves are thus made 
and covered with scallop shells laid in cement, giving them 
a rather singular appearance, and indicating that the deceased 
died at sea, or was a seafaring person. 

BEGGARS. 

Malaga is full of beggars, old and young, some with one 
arm, some with none ; some with one leg, some with none ; 
some with one eye, some with none. Some on crutches and 
others on none ; one man on his hands and knees, his feet 
sticking out behind him, with their soles turned up on a line 
with his hips, a poor, ragged, forlorn creature, smoking the 
irrepressible cigarette. Blind beggars peddle lottery tickets. 

The people of Malaga complimented us by staring at us 
at every turn ; if we halted to look at any thing, we were in- 
stantly surrounded by men, women, boys, and girls, and many 



8 2 Papers from over the Water. 

of them appeared to be persons of the better class who ought 
to have been more polite. 

• As we rode through the streets, the shopkeepers would 
jump or rather fall over their counters — for your true Spanish 
shopman is too lazy to jump — and run to their doors to see 
us pass, and make such remarks as pleased them. 

Spanish people are not so polite as the French. Strangers 
are not thus rudely gazed at in France. 

The fish-dealers of Malaga carry their merchandise in 
broad, shallow baskets hanging to cords tied over their el- 
bows, their hands being placed on their hips for support, an 
awkward way of doing a very simple thing. 

Many of the streets of Malaga, like those in most of these 
old towns, are so narrow that people have to ensconce them- 
selves in doorways to get out of the way of a passing vehicle, 
but as only a few vehicles are used, they are not much 
troubled in this way. 

A DRY RIVER. 

There is a small river running through Malaga, or rather^ 
a place where there is a river when there is any water — 
which is but seldom, there having been but seven days' rain 
in eight months. The banks of this waterless stream are 
walled in through the city to protect the houses from the 
floods, for floods do sometimes come and carry off all before 
them. Now the river-bed is as dry and dusty as any dusty 
highway 

RAISIN GIRLS. 

As we were walking about the city we went into a raisin 
warehouse to see the girls pack the sweet fruit for foreign 
markets. We had scarcely entered before my companion, a 
good-looking New-York publisher, had a 'kerchief tied around 
his arm by one of the girls, who at the same time gave him 



A Stage Ride — Cruel Drivers. 83 

a bunch of raisins. These girls always play this trick on 
strangers for the purpose of getting a little money, as it would 
be considered insulting to return the 'kerchief to its owner 
without a piece of silver. 

After a brief sojourn at Malaga, we started for Granada, 
the Granada of Alhambra fame. 

A STAGE RIDE— CRUEL DRIVERS. 

We left Malaga before daylight of a cold morning, seated 
on the top of the stage, drawn by six mules, with two horses 
on the lead — the near horse being ridden by an active young 
Spaniard, who displayed great dexterity in mounting and dis- 
mounting and in managing the team. Besides this rider, we 
had a manager or conductor, who sat on the front seat of 
the diligence, (as the stage is called,) a young fellow to go on 
foot, where the road was ascending, to whip the mules and 
horses ; a guard by the side of the manager, armed to the 
teeth and feet, for he had pistols in his boot-legs, and another 
guard, armed with muskets, on the steps of the stage. 

Thus provided with riders and managers and whippers 
and guards, we bounded off up the dry river, around sharp 
corners, through crooked, narrow streets, and out of the city, 
and up the hills and over the mountain, having to climb sev- 
eral thousand feet to reach Granada. 

As we ascended the hills, daylight broke over their top, 
showing us Malaga and the Mediterranean at our feet and 
the snow-covered Sierra Nevadas in the north, and now 
commenced the most outrageous whipping of horses, pound- 
ing of mules, yelling of drivers, ever witnessed by poor mor- 
tals. No matter how hard the* poor beasts tugged — no mat- 
ter how much they puffed and blowed and sweated and 
strained — whack and pound, and pound and whack, and 
yell and scream, and kick and strike — first one, then another 



84 Papers from over the Water. 

— all had to take such blows as poor beasts always take from 
human brutes. 

The off-horse seemed to be the favorite pounding-ground 
for the whipper on foot, who would steal up behind him, and, 
while the poor lame creature was straining every muscle, 
sweating at every pore, he would, with all his might, lay a 
great thick stick on his bare ribs, over his head, on his legs, 
and on his flanks — all the while the manager on the box yell- 
ing in concert with him on foot, making the hillsides echo 
with blows and howlings. 

Such shouts as " a-yah," " a-yah," " pastorah," " pastorah," 
" vallay-roastah," " vallay-roastah," "whoop," "whoop," in- 
termixed and sandwiched with Spanish curses and Spanish 
blows, were the music with which we wound our way up the 
hill. 

Spanish teamsters are the most cruel wretches that ever 
tormented working-cattle, just the creatures to worry bulls to 
death with bloodhounds, and murder old horses with pain- 
maddened bullocks, in a bull-ring. 

SINGULAR LANDSCAPE AND SCENERY. 

The scene around us, as we wound our way up the zigzag 
road, turning its abrupt curves on a lively gallop, as we al- 
ways did, no matter how dangerous, was one of singular 
beauty and grandeur. 

Beneath us, on the south, lay Malaga with its narrow streets, 
dry rivers, impudent people, and shallow bay, bounded by 
the blue sea, while on the east, the north, and west, rose up 
hill on hill, and back of these great, high mountains of rock, 
without a tree, or plant, or shrub to hide their stony naked- 
ness ; and back, far back of these, in the north and east the 
morning's sun was gilding the snow peaks of the Sierras. 

The hills nearest us were the most peculiar ones I ever saw ; 



Landscape and Scenery — Armed Guards. 85 

some looking like huge ant-hills, overtopping each other, some 
like great pyramids, others like huge sugar-loaves; some, like 
monster animals with glossy coats, while between and all 
around them were ravines, gullies, and on their tops, up on 
their highest peaks, were the whitewashed cottages of the 
peasants, standing like so many watch-towers solitary and 
alone, not a green thing around them. 

Winding around these hills, mule paths are seen in all di- 
rections, leading from house to house and to the great high- 
way, twisting and crooked as serpents. 

In the spring and summer, when covered with crops, these 
hills must look beautiful, but now, being bare of verdure and 
all under cultivation, showing nothing but brown earth, not 
a blade of grass or green tree, they look barren and cheerless. 

On and up we went, hour after hour, till we passed the hills 
and began our descent toward the railway that was to take 
us to Granada. It is easier going down hill than up, and as 
the whipper could not run as fast as the poor beasts could 
travel down the hill, they were relieved from his merciless 
pounding. 

ARMED GUARDS. 

At regular intervals we passed armed guards patroling the 
road, two by two ; while men at work on the highway had 
their guns conveniently near them, and nearly every solitary 
traveler, whether on mule-back or on foot, had a musket, 
giving a stranger the impression that somebody was afraid. 

SPANISH PEASANTS. 

The peasants were generally poor-looking, meamy clad in 
trousers of goat and sheep skins, with hair and wool on, their 
feet wrapped in rags, tied with grass and straw strings, and a dir- 
ty blanket over their shoulders, the outer corner or portion 



86 Papers from over the Water. 

always being carried on the left shoulder, never over the right. 
This is also the custom with those who wear cloaks. I have 
seen but two men in Spain wear the cloak or shawl in any 
other manner. 

Occasionally we met a few peasants decently clothed in 
cloth garments, trousers opened and laced on the outside of 
the leg, and reaching to the knee, the calf and ankle covered 
with white stockings, and sometimes these were protected 
from the saddle by neat leather leggings laced on the outside, 
making a very picturesque and pleasing costume.- 

SCARCITY OF FUEL. 

The people are bothered for fuel. True, they need but 
little; but, like the Irishman who boasted how much he 
could buy at home for sixpence, if he only had one, the 
trouble with the people is, to get the little needed ; and the 
women could be seen gathering up, and carrying home on 
their heads, such little twigs as they could find in the fields 
where a few scraggy grape-vines had been trimmed, or where 
a straggling olive-tree had dropped a decayed branch. 

The mode of cultivation is very rude, and their tools«Hicon- 
venient. 

Instead of breaking up their land with the plow, they use 
a short, crooked, hook-shaped tool, resembling a cooper's 
adze, with which they dig up the earth ; so short and crook- 
ed is it that, to get the edge or blade into the ground, the 
workman must bend over till his face almost touches the 
earth ; then, with a blow to drive the hook into the ground, 
and a jerk to turn it up, he makes out to fit the ground for 
the harrow and the scratching thing used as a plow, that be- 
ing the last tool used, instead of being the first. 

I saw forty men in a row, thus hooking up the earth. 
Such a thing as a shovel or spade, either of which would 



An Archbishop. 87 

enable a man to do four times the work with great ease, I 
have not seen in Spain. 

This part of Spain eats a little pork, the raw material for 
which is seen in droves of black pigs, no other color being 
in favor. 

As I agree with Moses on the pork question, I can not tell 
whether the flesh of these colored individuals is good, bad, 
ro indifferent. 

Spanish farmers have no barns ; they need none in their 
dry climate. 

Where grain is raised, it is thrashed in the field, on a stone 
or brick-paved thrashing-floor, hundreds of which are seen 
between Malaga and Granada. They are from fifty to one 
hundred feet in diameter, simply a level, paved plateau. 

Before reaching. the railway, we passed through the old 
city of Lojar, founded by some Roman marauder before 
Christianity began. Over the door of a low wine-shop was 
a sign telling the thirsty that it was the Posado del Jesus 
Nazareno ; in other words, the Wine-Shop of Jesus of Naza- 
reth ! 

Rather a queer sign for Protestant eyes. 

AN ARCHBISHOP. 

We finally reached the rail, and sped on for Granada ; but 
before getting there, we halted at a little, decayed village, 
around the depot of which quite a crowd had collected to wit- 
ness the departure of the Archbishop of the province. His 
reverence was a fine-looking, old gentleman of some sixty 
years, who seemed to be greatly beloved by the people, many 
of whom had the pleasure of kissing his hand, which he kind- 
ly held out for any body and every body that could reach it 

As the cars started off, the crowd set up cheer on cheer 
for their spiritual leader, just as our American heretics would 



88 Papers from over the Water. 

cheer a departing politician who had made a good speech. 
It seemed a strange way of showing respect for a religious 
dignitary; but as the affair was none of mine, I merely 
looked and wondered. 

In due time we reached Granada, and were met at the de- 
pot by a host of the Archbishop's followers, official and other- 
wise, all led by a dignitary bearing a long silver mace. He 
undertook to get things into shape, but it was of no use. Things 
would not get into any shape but the shape of confusion, 
turned upside down, and to add to the poor man's troubles, 
I was pushed in between him and his reverence the Arch- 
bishop, and thus we passed through the double rows of 
lookers-on, some admiring the Bishop and others staring at 
me; but at last we got out of the crowd, dignitary with 
mace, Yankee heretic, Archbishop, and all ; and I found my 
way to my hotel, under the very walls of the Alhambra, 
that monument of Moorish times and Moorish tastes, and 
leaving the moonbeams glistening its old walls, I fell 
asleep. 



XI. 



Granada — Moorish Buildings — Convicts in the Alhambra 
Grounds — Gypsies — Poor Old Monk — A Painted Cross — 
Sectarian Pictures — A Child's Funeral — Valencia Bull- 
Ring and Bankers — Barcelona — A Moor's Head in a 
Church — Farewell to Spain, etc. 

Perpignan, France, December, 1867. 
Books about the Alhambra create in the minds of readers 
anticipations not to be realized, especially by those who first 
visit the Alcazar at Seville. 

True, there is much to admire in and around the Alham- 
bra, but with all its present glory, telling of greater glory gone 
forever, it failed to impress me as I had anticipated. However, 
there is enough to interest the traveler and well repay the incon- 
venient journey to reach it; but I earnestly advise all who 
visit it, to do so before going to Seville. 

MOORISH TASTES. 

The cathedralized mosque at Cordova, the Alcazar at Se- 
ville, and the Alhambra at Granada tell wonderful tales of 
the vanquished Moor; speak impressively of his industry, 
tastes, habits, religion, luxury ; they talk eloquently, with their 
horse-shoe arches; their curiously cut marble and stone 
columns and pillars, their elaborate courts and baths, their 



9<d Papers from over the Water. 

corridors and galleries, their wonderful ornamentation of floor 
and ceiling and wall; continuously and firmly has their 
cemented masonry been speaking to the world, while more 
than a score of human generations have come and gone, and 
strongly and proudly do they speak to-day; beautifully do 
their rainbow-colored tiles speak of skill and art ; proudly do 
their old ambassadorial halls proclaim former power and more 
than kingly magnificence, but mournfully and sadly does the 
Spanish plaster on their walls speak of power without taste, 
of strength without appreciation, of spite prompted by venge- 
ful bigotry; mournfully does the water trickle from their 
fountains, dropping like tears from those whose friends have 
gone never to return. Judging the Moors simply by what 
they built, and the Spaniards by the spoiling they have done, 
one must say that the Mohammedan was better than the 
Christian, that changing the crescent for the cross worked no 
elevation of the race ; but with the cross came the great civil- 
izer, the press, and though in papal Spain it has not as yet 
done its perfect work, yet, as it has done something and is 
doing more for humanity, perhaps we ought to be thankful 
for the change, though one can not help feeling sad in re- 
membering the vanquished Moor. 

GRANADA— CATHEDRAL. 

Granada is a fine old city with beautiful surroundings, 
contains many things of historic interest, is the burial-place 
of Ferdinand and Isabella, the great friends of Columbus. 
Here, also, rest the remains of Crazy Jane, the grandmother 
of Spain's second Philip, the builder of the Escorial. 

Their tombs are in the old cathedral, itself a marvel of the 
past, a mighty relic of bygone zeal, in which the visitor may 
see the silver crown worn by Isabella, some of her needle- 
work, the sword and sceptre of Ferdinand, and the coffin in 



Summer and Winter — Convicts. 91 

which Crazy Jane used to carry the body of her dead hus- 
band. 

In one of the chapels there is a life-size figure of Christ, 
having very long hair on his head, a fancifully trimmed petti- 
coat around his body, and his feet just over — in fact, almost 
on the head of the Virgin, giving the impression that the 
Saviour is standing on his mother's head. 

In another chapel there is a life-size figure of the Virgin 
holding the dead Christ in her arms, all cut out of one piece 
of marble, and beautifully done, the face of the Virgin being 
very expressive. 

It is really wonderful to see how religious art can make 
marble and wood and metal look and speak. 

Painted in large letters on some of the mighty columns of 
this cathedral, were notices warning men not to speak to a 
woman in those parts of the sacred edifice, under pain of ex- 
communication. 

SUMMER AND WINTER. 

In a garden formerly belonging to the Alhambra, I saw a 
heavy frost on the grass, ice half an inch thick on the water, 
rose-bushes full of roses, and orange-trees loaded with fruit — 
all within a space of two hundred feet ; a marriage of winter 
and summer not often witnessed. 

On the hillside, opposite the Alhambra, is the gypsy quar- 
ter, and all up and down this hillside, these strange people 
have made caves or huts in the ground, just like so many 
two-legged foxes, and here they live, generation after gene- 
ration. Some of their caves look neat and comfortable. 

CONVICTS. 

Observing many peculiarly dressed men at work on Sunday, 
under armed guards, about the grounds of the Alhambra, I 



92 Papers from over the Water. 

inquired why they were thus dressed, and was told that they 
were convicts, nearly all of whom were guilty of homicide, 
having taken life in some brawl or quarrel ; such deeds not 
being uncommon. They were doing but little work; were 
chatting with the guards, whose muskets stood against the 
wall, within reach of a convict, while the vigilant guard warm- 
ed his fingers by a little fire. One convict was pointed out 
as quite a hero, having killed some three or four men. 
They were nearly all quite young men. 

AN OLD MONK. 

On the outskirts of the city is an old monastery, through 
the desolate cloisters and tenantless chapels and rooms of 
which, we were conducted by an old man, so bent with age 
that he seemed to be looking into the ground to find a place 
to lay his old body ; a poor, tottering, old man, cloak- wrap- 
ped and skull-capped in black, looking so woe-begone, so 
pitiful, so lonely, that one might almost wish to have his mon- 
astic order restored to former power for his sake, and as he 
led us from place to place, his old legs too feeble to lift his 
feet from the marble floor, over which they scraped and 
slid and shuffled, it seemed as if we had called one back 
to life whose sleep should not have been disturbed ; as if we 
were trying to light a lamp whose last drop of oil had long, 
long before been burned; and as he sat him down to rest 
while we looked and wondered at what his predecessors had 
done, he looked the very personification of the " last man." 

CHA RA CTERISTIC PICTURES. 

On the walls of the corridors of this old monastery are 
many very curious and characteristic paintings, representing 
English Protestants torturing and killing monks; among 
others is one representing Henry the Eighth taking the skin 



A G?rat Work of Art. 93 

off a living monk. Royal business that. Another picture 
shows a living monk having his entrails taken out by a wind- 
lass, around which they are being wound; others represent 
burnings, hangings, roastings, boilings, skinnings, quarter- 
ings, and other humane treatments that religious bigotry is 
so fond of. 

One very peculiar feature of these pictures was the per- 
fectly sweet and lamblike faces of the monks, and the more 
than diabolical features and forms of their Protestant persecu- 
tors. Sectarian art like sectarian zeal is somewhat one- 
sided. 

This old monastery contains some of the richest and most 
wonderful work to be found in Spain. The doors of the 
sacristy and the drawers therein (in which garments were kept) 
are of different wood, such as walnut, oak, ebony, and are 
wonderfully inlaid with ivory, mother of pearl, shell, and sil- 
ver, laced and twined and wreathed and curled, as skillfully 
as only art and industry prompted by religious zeal can 
work. 

On the sides of this room were great slabs of the most ex- 
quisitely colored marble, worked and polished to perfection ; 
large oblong medallions of agate, some of them twenty inches 
wide. In a small room is a beautiful little temple of jasper, 
onyx, agate, and other costly stones and elegant marbles, 
one of the finest specimens of work I ever saw. 

A GREAT WORK OF ART. 

High up on one end of a large room is a cross painted on 
the wall, and so wonderfully is it done that the spectator will 
not believe his eyes until he walks directly under it and sees 
that the wood does not project from the wall, and that the 
nails do not stand out of the wood, but that it is only paint, 
paint on a plastered wall ; and as he walks away from it, look- 



94 Papers from over the Water. 

ing at it as he goes, again he thinks he is mistaken, that it is 
a real wooden cross fast to the wall, that the nails are real 
iron, that they are only partly driven into the wood, that the 
shadow their heads make on the wood is real shade, and 
back he goes to the end of the room again, and stands right 
under the cross and looks up again, and again finds it nothing 
but p aint, and only paint on a plastered wall. 

I think that painted cross the most perfectly deceptive 
piece of work I ever saw so natural is it, and so real in 
effect. 

A FUNERAL PROCESSION. 

A funeral procession passed our hotel. It consisted of 
about a dozen boys on foot, with lighted candles, (in the day- 
time,) and as many men, smoking cigarettes. The corpse 
was that of an infant, borne on a bier carried by four men. 
The bier was suspended from their hands by short cords. 
The coffin was painted in light, cheerful colors, the upper or 
lid part of it being as roomy as the under part, just as if the 
coffin had been halved; the corpse lying on the under half, 
neatly dressed, with its little bare face looking as calmly up 
to our common Father as if it had never known pain or 
sorrow. The other half of the coffin was carried by boys; 
all, men and boys, chatting, laughing, and smoking as if the 
dead little one was simply sleeping in its mother's arms, in- 
stead of going to rest in the bosom of our great mother. 

When we left our hotel, the landlord requested us to give 
his house " a character," which we did in a book kept for 
that purpose. Some of our countrymen display great wit or 
its opposite. In this Granada hotel-keeper's book of recom- 
mendation, a bright genius from Philadelphia had penned 
these soul-stirring words (with his name thereto) : " Beautiful 
scenery, but not equal to the United States." There's senti- 



% 

Valencia — A Deformed Beggar. 95 

ment coupled with patriotism ; poetry married to keen ob- 
servation. 

From Granada back to Malaga we had a modified form 
of the mule-whipping and horse-pounding served out to us 
on our journey up. On arriving at the hotel at Malaga, we 
were told that we could have rooms there for that night only, 
as the hotel had been taken for the next night by an Austri- 
an archduke, or some other titled person from the north; 
but as we did not intend to remain in that beggar-crowded 
city of impudent gazers more than one night — in fact, not 
even that if we could have gotten away — we did not care 
much about being turned out in the morning by the duke. 

VALENCIA. 

From Malaga to Valencia is thirty hours by rail, a tedious 
ride, without a decent place to get a meal. As we approach 
Valencia the country becomes perfectly charming, the rail- 
way traversing miles and miles of orange and fig and mul- 
berry and olive orchards, with occasional clusters of palm- 
trees towering beautifully over the landscape. 

This section is one of the most productive in Spain, is 
watered by the most perfect system of irrigation in Europe ; 
every part of every field is supplied with conduits for the wa- 
ter, some of earth and some of cemented brick ; these latter 
having been used ever since the Moors left them, hundreds 
of years ago. 

The water is drawn from wells by very rude machinery 
worked by blinded mules, the dipping apparatus consisting 
of earthen jars tied to wheels. 

A DEFORMED BEGGAR. 

Valencia is a lively city, with comparatively few beggars, 
but among them was a blind Albino boy leading a blind Ab 



9 6 Papers from over the Water. 

bino man, and a man walking on his hands and feet, mon- 
key fashion, the poor creature being unable to walk upright 
or to move in any way but on all fours. His constant effort 
to raise his head to see the passers-by, had caused his back 
to hollow or bend downward, just as you have seen the back 
crooked in what are called " sway back" horses. Spain has 
more wretchedly deformed beggars than I ever saw else- 
where. 

* The largest building in Valencia, if not in Spain, is one 
used for murdering old horses, and called a bull-ring. 

BUSINESS LIFE. 

In the vestibule of the post-office there was a short writ- 
ten list of uncalled-for letters. This looks as if the hundred 
thousand people living in the city did not have a very great 
correspondence. Calling on a banker, we were asked to 
wait a short time for him to read his letters, before seeing us. 
We waited. Very business-like for a banker with a dozen 
clerks, sitting around smoking cigarettes. Over the store 
doors, or in front of them, may be seen little signs, with pic- 
tures of saints or other religious notables, and behind their 
counters the clerks wait on their lady customers with their 
hats on and cigarettes in their mouths. 

The market of Valencia displays more and better vegeta- 
bles, fruit, and nuts than I have seen elsewhere in Spain ; a 
perfect avalanche of good things. 

AN OLD CITY. 

From Valencia we went to Barcelona by rail and stage, (the 
railway not being finished,) and as our stage was behind 
time we missed the train, and had to stay all night at the 
town of Tarragona, a city claiming to be a thousand years 
older than Christianity. 



Charming Sight. 97 

We of America, born, as it were, but yesterday, hardly real- 
ize that cities can be so old, and as we walk their ancient 
streets we are impressed with the great difference between the 
Old and the New World. With us all is new ; we are get- 
ting ready to " keep house." But here, the old folks have 
kept house so long that the building is going to decay, and 
over its rusty roof and up its cracked walls old Time is 
making destructive finger-marks. 

To while away the evening, we strayed into the cathedral 
that has been standing for five hundred years, and wandered 
through its dimly-lighted aisles; watching a few devotees 
kneeling in the shadows of its great columns, and listening 
to their whispered prayers. 

These grim, old cathedrals are very impressive, even by 
daylight, but much more so in the evening, or at the hour 
of early morning mass; then the lights and shadows, the 
chaunts, the music, and the ceremonials produce a wonderful 
effect on one not familiar with them. 

CHARMING SIGHT. 

We left Tarragona before daylight for Barcelona, our 
Joute being along the shore of the Mediterranean, and 
through groves of mulberry, fig, and orange trees; as the 
day broke, the scene was one of singular beauty. 

To our right, some miles distant, was the Blue Sea ; be- 
tween the sea and the railway were orange trees, loaded with 
fruit ; close down to the water's edge, on the far-off horizon, 
were two little white clouds, having their under-sides tinged 
with the golden rays of the upcoming sun, and as these rays 
brightened and covered these little clouds, it seemed as if 
they were made of golden wool, so fleecy and gold-like did 
they look. Soon, however, their beauty was hid by the bright 
sun, as he came up out of the sea, looking like a huge wheel 



98 Papers from over the Water. 

of solid gold, and as the rays gilded the leaves of the orange- 
trees and made 'their yellow fruit look more gold-like, the 
scene was one long to be remembered. 

BARCELONA. 

Barcelona is a very fine city, having many beautiful streets 
and squares, plenty of public vehicles with good horses, 
many new buildings in progress, one of the best opera-houses 
in Europe, hotels without female servants, (ladies, remember 
this,) and a cathedral with a huge Moor's head suspended 
from the lower part of one of its organs — some thirty feet 
from the floor, a great, turbaned, bearded, life-colored head 
— hanging as a memento of the conquest of the Moors by 
the Spaniards ; a singular method of proclaiming the supe- 
riority of the Bible over the Koran. 

LEAVING SPAIN. 

From Barcelona (whose barbers take what you choose to 
give for cutting your hair) to Perpignan, France, is some 
fourteen hours, eleven of which is by stage, through a coun- 
try more hilly and timber-covered than any other portion of 
Spain we have seen ; in fact, the appearance of the country 
changes very rapidly as we approach France, and before 
many miles are passed after crossing the frontier, the traveler 
realizes very fully that France is not Spain, and that Spaniards 
are not Frenchmen. 

In Spain, the highways are perfectly bare of shade trees. 
In France, scarcely a road can be found without them. On 
Spanish roads vehicles are seldom seen, donkeys and mules 
doing all the carrying. In France, one is never out of sight 
of wheeled vehicles of some sort. Spanish teamsters beat 
their poor beasts till the blood runs, while the French team- 
sters do not. Spanish men seldom laugh, seldom are polite, 



Leaving Spain. 99 

pay but little regard to others' comfort. Frenchmen seldom 
look grum, are usually polite, and do not insist on puffing to- 
bacco-smoke in the faces of ladies in omnibuses and rail- 
way-cars. Spanish shops are dark, gloomy, tasteless in their 
arrangement, and their owners as crusty as the shops are 
dark. French shops are tastefully arranged and their owners 
politely civil. In Spanish towns, the traveler seldom sees a 
plant or flower in house windows. In French towns, one can 
not look up or down a street without seeing them. Spanish 
towns are full of bad odors from un drained vaults. French 
towns do not all offend in that particular. Spanish railway sta- 
tions are not clean or comfortable. French ones are. Spanish 
custom-house and railway officials are imperiously uncivil. 
French ones apologize for the trouble they cause, and thank 
you for your ticket. France has thousands of magnificent 
country residences, chateaux. Spain scarcely any. France 
has plenty of running streams. Spain but few. 

I have traversed Spain from north to south, from its cen- 
tre to its eastern bounds ; have seen its small, dark-haired, 
fiery-eyed women ; its sombre-faced, cigarette-smoking, cloak- 
wrapped men; its magnificent highways, and its miserable 
roads, wheelless and hoof-trodden ; have noticed the absence 
of shrines at road-crossings, so common in other Catholic 
countries ; have eaten of its good bread and smelled its mis- 
erable butter ; have eaten of its tolerable mutton and tried to 
eat its poor beef; have drunk its excellent wines and suffered 
from its bad water; have eaten its luxurious grapes and in- 
haled its mountain air; have seen its blue, cloudless sky, its 
wonderfully great and magnificent cathedrals, splendid 
churches, and the comfortless-looking dwellings of the poor ; 
its barren plains and beautiful orange-groves ; its waterless riv- 
er-beds, and the work of its sweeping torrents; its thousands 
of fat, well-clad priests, and its thousands of ragged, starving 



ioo Papers from over the Water. 

beggars; its comfortably clothed, handsome military officers, 
and. its stupid-looking, shoeless, stockingless common 'sol- 
diers; its well-to-do hundreds, and its ill-clad, poorly-fed 
thousands; have missed the middle class seen in other lands; 
have seen its snow-capped mountains and its sun-warmed 
valleys; its granite-backed, boulder-covered hills and crop- 
growing plains ; have seen its great picture-gallery and ab- 
sence of art appreciation among its people; have seen its 
horse-murdering, bull-killing shows, and the gorgeous vest- 
ments of its clergy ; have slept in its good, clean beds, and 
shivered by its cold, smoky fireplaces ; have looked on many 
a reminder of its great past and seen something of the dead 
life of its present ; can see in the newly-erected tall factory- 
chimneys signs of a better life; can hear in the click of the 
telegraph and the whistle of the locomotive sounds that shall 
usher her to glory again, to a greater glory than was ever 
dreamed of by any Philip or Charles or Isabella that wore 
her crown or led her people to battle ; and now, land that 
sent forth the discoverer of a new world, a world greater 
than you can ever be, land of genial clime and fertile soil, 
land of fruits and flowers, of the olive and the palm, fare- 
well! 






XII. 



Turkeys — A Kingly Sentinel — Salt — Wine— Brandy — Yoked 
Horses — Old Temple and Amphitheatre at JMmes — Large 
Pigs — Cheerful Workers — An Old Aqueduct — Avignon, 
France — Stony Plain — Zong Railway Tunnel — Mar- 
seilles — Costly Cafe — Scene at Railway Station — Nice 
and its Contrasts, etc., etc., etc. 

Nice, France, January, 1868. 
On our way from Barcelona to Perpignan, whence I last 
wrote you, we passed drove after drove of turkeys, and 
scores of huge carts loaded with them, and with chickens, 
on their way to somebody's kitchen for Christmas dinners. 
Each cart contained, I should think, hundreds of turkeys and 
chickens, all alive, and the droves contained thousands, and 
the market places of the towns we passed through were 
filled with droves of the gobbler tribe, their owners manag- 
ing them with long reeds, just as easily as a good driver 
would control his horses. The peasant men in that section 
of the country wear long red woolen caps on their heads, 
great coarse things, about as shapeless as the legs of the 
trousers worn by French soldiers. 

PERPIGNAN. 

Perpignan is a very strongly fortified town, at the gates of 
which our passports were demanded ; but on telling the po- 
lite official that they were in our trunks, and that we were 



102 Papers from over the Water. 

American travelers engaged in sight-seeing, we were allowed 
to pass without any delay. The citadel of Perpignan is con- 
sidered " untakable." The spot is shown where the Emperor 
Charles the Fifth (the town once belonged to Spain) found 
a sentinel asleep on his post, and to awaken him pushed him 
into the ditch, and stood sentinel himself until relieved in 
due course. Those old emperors had some strange modes 
of dealing with people. * 

Arago was born near here, and once represented the town 
in the French parliament. From Perpignan we went to the 
fine old city of 

NIMES, 

passing over a large extent of marshy land, covered with 
small ponds or earthen vats filled with salt water, undergo- 
ing evaporation into salt, much of that useful article being 
thus produced in this part of France. 

WINE AND BRANDY. 

On our way to Nimes we passed many railway trains, 
loaded with wine and brandy, and saw thousands of casks 
of these liquids at the different depots. This section of 
France produces large quantities of these articles for expor- 
tation, there being in Nimes about one hundred distilleries. 
A large portion of the arable land in this section is covered 
by the vine. I saw here, for the first time, horses yoked to- 
gether, as we yoke oxen, and hitched to the plow by a pole 
between them, without any tugs or traces. I have seen mules 
thus worked, but don't recollect having before seen horses 
thus geared. J did not like to see the beautiful creatures 
rigged ox-fashion, with great, heavy wooden yokes ; but peo- 
ple here, as in America, do about as they please in such 
matters, regardless of the likes and dislikes of travelers. 



Nhnes — Wine and Brandy. 103 

Nimes is quite a pleasant city, with fine squares, decent 
streets, good buildings, and a few very interesting remains 
of Roman times, such as beautiful baths, part of a temple sup- 
posed to have been dedicated to Diana, also a little gem of a 
temple of pure Corinthian architecture — and a great amphi- 
theatre, capable of seating some twenty thousand people ; a 
huge oblong stone structure, some seventy feet high, over four 
hundred feet long, and some three hundred feet wide, with- 
out roof, or door, or scrap of wood, all stone, brick, and ce- 
ment, and in such excellent preservation as to be used even 
now for public sports, after standing nobody can tell how 
many centuries, as all record of its erection has passed into 
oblivion. Those old Romans knew how to work stone, brick, 
and cement into great and durable buildings ; but they did not 
know how to use the more durable materials made of human 
rights, human duties, and human brotherhood; and down 
they went into the great abyss that has swallowed and will 
swallow all peoples that ignore these great foundations of 
national permanency. 

Let us hope and so work that our own young nation may 
escape this doom ; see to it that on the capstone of every 
dome, on the keystone of every arch in our national edifice, 
there shall be cut in living letters, Liberty, Justice, Unity ; 
then shall our America speak more eloquently to the com- 
ing ages than ever Roman Colosseum or. Egyptian obelisk 
spoke of the dead past ; thus, and thus only, shall we excel 
those who have preceded us in the march of time, and show 
the world that our experiment is not a failure, nor the young 
republic a reproach among the nations. 

On our way to see the great Roman aqueduct over the 
river Gardon, we passed a drove of the largest swine I ever 
saw, great, giant creatures, tall as year-old bulls, with frame 
enough to build at least six hundred pounds per head of clear 



104 Papers from over the Water. 

pork upon, with heads and legs large and long enough for 
"oxen. 

CHEERFUL WORKERS. 

For a few miles out of Nimes, on the road to Avignon, 
the country is quite good and well cultivated ; and as we rode 
along, the peasants, men and women, were merrily singing at 
olive gathering, some of the girls, more active than the boys, 
getting up into the tree-tops, and tuning their pipes like so 
many great birds. These European work-people seem more 
cheerful than their American cousins. 

OLD AQUEDUCT. 

After some two hours' drive, a sharp turn in the road brought 
us in sight of the famous " Pont du Gard," the wonderful 
aqueduct through whose stone conduits the water found its 
way for some seventeen centuries! (think of that, Messrs. 
Commissioners of the Croton Water Works !) and may (with 
the slight repairs it is now undergoing) find its way for as 
many more. 

It is a wonderful piece of work, and well worth a long 
journey to see. It consists of three tiers of arches, the low- 
est tier having six, the second seven, and the third thirty-five ; 
and on the top of the third or upper tier of arches is the 
stone-walled and partially stone-covered canal or passage- 
way, some five feet high and two or three feet wide, through 
which the water was conveyed so many centuries. From 
the top of this little canal to the bed of the river it is one 
hundred feet, and from end to end nine hundred feet. We 
walked through its entire length. Its sides are covered with 
a mineral deposit, several inches thick, made by the running 
water. 



Marseilles. 105 



a vignon, 

Leaving this wonderful relic of a great people, we wound 
our way over a carriage-road through a poor country to the old 
city of Avignon, once the seat of the popes, and now the rest- 
ing-place of all that remains of some of them. It has, like 
all these old cities, many narrow, crooked streets that date far 
back into the past ; some modem squares and streets that 
look quite comfortable ; while its old Cathedral and Papal Pa- 
lace are any thing but inviting — the latter, now occupied by 
soldiers, looking much more like a prison than a palace. 

MARSEILLES. . • 

There is little in Avignon to interest the traveler, so we tar- 
ried but one day, and journeyed on to Marseilles, whose wo- 
men are handsomer, houses taller, streets wider, and people 
look more like New-Yorkers than I have seen elsewhere. A 
fine, lively, busy city, with a cafe that cost eighty thousand 
dollars to fit up, (no French town without a cafe f) beautiful 
drives, splendid public grounds, almost steepleless churches ; 
all in all, a city looking comfortable enough to live in. 

The first part of the short journey from Avignon to Mar- 
seilles is through a charming country, covered with vineyards, 
well-shaded' highways, gardens, and isolated farm-houses, 
looking as neat and comfortable as one could wish. Single 
farm-houses are not common in this old world ; the people 
generally huddle together in towns and villages. After pass- 
ing this fertile' region, the railway traverses a large plain com- 
pletely covered with small stones, in size like geese' and hens' 
eggs — not a particle of earth to be seen for miles — and on 
this pebbly plain, vines grow that produce one of the best 
wines in France. Leaving this stony plateau, the train 
rushes with a prolonged scream through a tunnel fifteen 



1 06 Papers from over the Water. 

thousand feet in length. On going to the railway station, the 
day before Christmas, to take our places in the train for the 
old city of Nice, we found a great crowd of old and young, 
men and women, boys and girls, soldiers, sailors, peasants, 
etc., crowding, pushing, laughing, joking about the ticket 
offices, all anxious to get away in the departing train for a 
Christmas holiday with distant friends. 

Little women lugging in huge trunks on their heads ; big 
women with small dogs under their arms; little girls with 
great dolls; big boys with "shooting-tools" and dogs; old 
men loaded with toys for the grandchildren; young men 
with gifts for sweethearts ; and all the sorts, sizes, and kinds 
of people that one expects to see at such a place at such 
a time; a jolly, anxious, well-dressed, well-behaved crowd of 
humanities, bent on having a good time somewhere. 

TO NICE. 

After a while, the great train got under motion, and away 
it dragged its slow length, like some monstrous crawling 
creature, dropping its scores at one place, its hundreds at 
another ; on past Toulon, the great naval station of France, 
on beyond sunny Cannes, to popular Nice, the winter resort 
of fashion-birds from the north, and invalids from everywhere; 
to Nice, with its beautiful promenade by the blue sea; its 
fine drives ; its white umbrellas marching up and down on 
these bright January days that are as warm as a New-York 
May time ; Nice, with its gardens full of fragrant flowers ; its 
streets as dusty as dry weather and much use can make 
them; its occasional bad odors, as offensive as nose can bear; 
its hotels so full that a vacant room can not be found in one 
of them; gay, lively, pretty, fashionable Nice; where the wo- 
men dress more gayly and flashily than at Saratoga or Baden ; 
where glaring velvets and dashing plushes meet one at every 



Nice. 107 

turn; where the gay become more* gay; where the fashionable 
of Paris strives to eclipse her sister from London ; where the 
belle of the north vies with her of the south; Nice, where 
the plainest women dress most gaudily ; where the oldest beaux 
wear the newest wigs and tightest boots; where the gentle- 
man who drives his own horses must not touch his whip 
when driving, but have it used by a servant ; Nice, with its 
burning sun and chilling shade; its eye-killing glare, its 
sweating days and shivering nights. After a brief sojourn, 
we shall be off for the Land of Garibaldi and the City of the 
Popes. 



3*=8 3=XZJ m \ ma ■ ■ jA u J!^'^ L1 ^ J ' ' '.f, ■■■ < .. K .i" T, E S^ 




V-™ a ,r— x< m-fr-n. nr-ni^m .an .irrml 



XIII. 

Along //w Mediterranean from Nice to Genoa — Sea-shore 
Toiu?is — Great Mountains — Terraced Vineyards — Pigskin 
Wine- Casks — A Sailor l s Skill and its Reward — Birth- 
plac of Columbus — A Little Cart and Little Team — 
Genoa : Its Porters, Veiled Women, Fine Palaces, Crooked 
Streets — Paganini's Fiddle — Paper Currency — Matrimo- 
nial Notices, etc., etc., etc. 

Genoa, Italy, January, 1868. 
A trip along the shores of the Mediterranean between 
Nice and Genoa is one of " the things " " to do." The Cor- 
nice road is one of the best — the scenery is fine, the hotels 
are comfortable, our driver was a good one, the team decent, 
and the weather, for the last two days of the old year, pretty 
comfortable; but when the new year came on deck, things 
changed, and, instead of the clear sky and balmy air that 
travelers give to Italy, young '6& reminded us very forcibly 
that " travelers' tales " are not always to be relied on, and 
that snow, wind, cold, and discomforts are not all in the 
north; for he chilled our feet, bit our ears, pinched 
our noses, and nipped our fingers as effectually as 
ever the "Ides of March" served a New-Yorker; but in 
spite of the cold, dust, wind, and snow, we enjoyed the trip. 

ROAD SCENERY. 

The road winds its crooked way, now by the sea, then 
around a bold headland ; now crawls zigzag up a hill ; 



Terraces. 109 

then through some little valley, into and out of an old town, 
with streets just wide enough to let a carriage pass Fubbingly 
along ; now through a tunnel, then under the walls of some 
ruin, apparently old enough to be one of Time's first-born • 
now outside the walls of a town whose streets are too nar- 
row to. admit a vehicle ; then down along the sandy beach, 
whose smooth face the sea laves as gently as a mother laves 
her infant ; now over some rock-bound promontory, against 
whose stony base the angry waves dash themselves, as if 
mad at so much encroachment on their domain ; then over the 
dry bed of a waterless river; now between high stone walls, 
inclosing vine-covered fields and gardens ; then in sight of 
the distant, spray-covered sea; now in sight of the great 
mountains ; then in view of some old town, perched away 
up on the very crest of a high hill, thousands of feet above 
the tide; now looking down into dwellings right under us; 
and so, with mountain and valley, with city and village, with 
castle-clad hills and smiling valleys around us, and above us, 
and below us, with the great sea on the right hand and the 
snow-covered peaks on our left, we journeyed on. 

TERRA CES. 

For the greater part of the distance, the hill-sides are ter- 
raced almost to their very tops, the terraces looking like 
great steps, as if made for huge giants to walk upon, on their 
way from the sea to the mountains; and where the hills cir- 
cle partially about some little valley, like an amphitheatre, 
these terraces looked like great seats for giants to sit upon 
and gaze out on the sea and look at old Neptune go cours- 
ing up and. down, or watch the mermaids combing their hair, 
while all about are hundreds of circular stone wells, at which 
they might have slaked their thirst ; scores of great, long 
tanks, in which they might have bathed their huge limbs, if too 



no Papers from over the Water. 

lazy to go down to the sea, (as giants usually were;) or to put 
terraces and wells and tanks to a much better use than step- 
ping-stones and seats and bath-tubs and drinking wells for 
giants, one is covered with olive-trees and grape-vines, and the 
other supplies the water needed to make them grow. There 
is stone wall enough in the terraces between Nice and Genoa 
to inclose an empire. 

A SMALL SOVEREIGNTY. 

Within a short distance of Nice is the Independent (by 
sufferance of France) Principality of Monaco, a sovereignty 
that claims remote historical antiquity for its foundation. It 
is about " as big as a piece of chalk ;" has its army, navy, 
forts, palaces, prince, fifteen hundred inhabitants, and the 
only public gambling institution in that part of Europe, the 
resort of knaves and fools from Nice, being in this particular 
a microscopic imitation of Baden. 

Seen from the Cornice road, which passes along the hill- 
side, hundreds of feet above it, Monaco looks like some lit- 
tle one's play-table, covered with toy-houses and pigmy cas- 
tles. 

After leaving this wee empire, we pass a dozen of little vil- 
lages close down to the sea; we wind our way among scores 
of small vessels hauled up on the beach, (no wharves in this 
part of the world,) getting an occasional glimpse of a light- 
house, silently warning the mariner to "keep off;" and after 
a while reach the old town of Brodighera, a place that has 
the monopoly of furnishing palm-leaves to St. Peter's at 
Rome for distribution and use on Palm- Sunday — a privilege 
granted by one of the popes a long time ago, and still recog- 
nized. 



Birthplace of Columbus. in 

A SAILOR'S SKILL. 

In attempting to raise a great obelisk at Rome, the 
weighty mass was hoisted to a certain height, when the cable 
could not be made to move it another inch; every thing was 
at a stand; no one knew what to do; the obelisk could 
not be raised ; dire calamities would certainly follow if the 
work was left undone. Just at this critical moment, a sailor, 
a native of Brodighera, came along, and seeing the trouble 
the people were in, told them to wet the cable; it was done, 
the cable did its work, and the obelisk went up to its place 
amid the shouts of the people ; to reward the sailor, the Pope 
gave his town the exclusive right to furnish St. Peter's with 
palm-leaves, and the right continues to this day. 

PIGS' SKINS. 

Shortly after leaving this palm-tree town, we reach Oneglia, 
whose people cover the fronts of their houses with inflated 
pigs' skins, taking this method of drying them to put wine 
in. These wine-casks, made of pigs' skins, look very strange, 
lying around in stores and at railway depots, retaining as 
they do enough of the animal's shape to be easily recog- 
nized. 

Near Genoa, and once its rival, is the busy town of Savo- 
na, which formerly had a most excellent harbor, but the jealous 
Genoese spoiled it by sinking therein old vessels filled with 
stones, around which the sand, in the course of time, accu- 
mulated in such quantities as to render their removal impos- 
sible ; thus maritime Savona died that Genoa might live. 

BIRTHPLACE OF COLUMBUS. 

Passing through the little town of Cogoletto, our driver 
halted before an old three-story house, on the front of which 
was an inscription, stating that " within its walls the discov- 



H2 Papers from over the Water. 

erer of America was born ;" shortly after leaving this old sea- 
washed village, we met a train of cars drawn by a locomotive 
bearing his name, (the first locomotive we saw in Italy;) and 
as we drove through one of the gates into the old city of 
Genoa, there stood right in front of us a magnificent marble 
monument of the great navigator. • 

On the timberless plains of old Spain, in a city once the 
capital of that ancient kingdom, we saw the house wherein 
Columbus died ; and now here, on the shore of the Medi- 
terranean, we saw the house wherein he was born. What he 
did while traveling from the old house in Cogoletto to the old 
house in Valladolid the world has been talking and writing 
and printing for almost four hundred years, and will continue 
to talk and write and print until talking and writing and 
printing shall cease. 

Many of the churches and public buildings along the route 
are frescoed on the outside, most of the subjects being reli- 
gious ; while private dwellings have window-blinds and cur- 
tains so well painted on their plastered fronts as to make it 
difficult for the passing traveler to tell which are painted and 
which are real. 

On our way, we passed a wee little donkey, hitched to a 
wee little cart, with little bits of solid wooden wheels not 
more than a foot in diameter; the cart was loaded with little 
wine-casks, on top of which sat a gayly-dressed Italian, look- 
ing as proud as the driver of the "band-wagon" of an 
American circus entering a country town in some Western 
State. 

PRIESTS. 

Since leaving Spain, we have seen but few priests, and the 
few we have seen were not so fat and well dressed as their 
brothers in that old kingdom. There they were well fed, 
and counted by thousands, the old cathedral at Seville hav- 



Hotels. 113 

ing about one hundred and twenty-six, and other churches in 
that city each having a porportionate number — in fact, one 
is rarely ever out of sight of their black gowns and broad- 
brimmed hats anywhere in that country. Beggars also are 
comparatively few, though we meet some in this part of Ita- 
ly, but in France none — every town we passed through in 
that empire giving notice by signboards that begging was 
prohibited therein. I expect to find plenty of the craft 
before leaving Italy, as " every body " says they swarm in 
all Italian cities. 

FIRE-PL A CES. 

Our readers would laugh to see the fire-places in this part of 
the world, where they are but seldom needed. They are 
square, deep recesses, from two to three feet deep, without flar- 
ing sides, so constructed as to carry all the heat up the chimney 
or send all the smoke into the room, burn wood very fast, 
and throw out but little warmth. Coal and stoves or grates 
are not seen in the hotels, which in other respects are quite 
comfortable ; in fact, much more so than the average of our 
American ones, a really poor hotel being seldom found in 
those parts of Europe usually visited by tourists. 

HOTELS. 

The hotels are generally clean, servants attentive, and invari- 
ably have much better beds than can be found in our hotels at 
home, though none have soft water for toilet purposes. Ex- 
cept at the public dinner-table, every thing consumed by the 
guest is charged for by the piece or article; so much for 
bread, so much for butter, or meat, or candles, (no gas in pri- 
vate rooms,) for the servants, (they too expect a fee,) even for 
servants to wait at table, when taking but a single meal in 
passing through a town ; sometimes charging for the use of 
napkins; in short, every thing is thus separately charged for, 



H4 Papers from over the Water. 

the whole averaging per day about as much as at first-class 
houses at home ; others are somewhat cheaper. 

GENOA PORTERS' ROW. 

On arriving at the hotel in Genoa, the usual row occurred 
between the hotel porters and the regular street porters, as 
to who should move our luggage from the carriage to the hotel. 

It seems that the law gives the licensed porters the right 
to move all luggage about the streets, and under this law they 
claim the right to move trunks, etc., from carriages to hotels ; 
and though the trunks are moved scarcely their length, 
(the streets being so narrow that there is but a few inches' 
space between the carriage-wheels and the houses,) these 
fighting porters are allowed to demand whatever they choose 
for their uncalled-for services ; in our case, a franc for each 
trunk ; they got only half from the courier who had the mat- 
ter in charge, and, as a little satisfaction for what they did not 
get, told him they would " knife" him if he would walk out- 
side of the hotel, an invitation he did not care to accept just 
then, as he was cold and hungry. 

VEILS. 

In Spain, the women # walk the streets with black veils in 
place of bonnets. The Genoese women wear white ones, 
made a lit.tle longer and fuller than those worn in Spain, 
gracefully carrying the flowing part of them over their shoul- 
ders and arms, the whole producing a very picturesque effect. 

The church bells of Genoa commence business very early 
in the morning, hours before daylight, and they keep up such 
a confounded ding-dong that sleep is out of the question. 

These bells are not so finely toned and musical as those 
heard in Spanish cities ; in fact, the church bells in Spain 
were the most musical, rich-toned, and pleasant that I ever 
heard, perfect gems of harmonious vibration. 



Columbus and Paganini. 115 

Genoa is a fine old city, (that is, if a city with narrow streets 
can claim that title,) has a great many large buildings, splen- 
did family palaces, very tall houses, fine grounds, and beauti- 
ful suburbs ; and were the streets as wide as some of those 
in Marseilles or Brussels, it would be a magnificent little 
city. 

These hot climates make high buildings and narrow 
streets quite desirable, by protecting the inhabitants from the 
suii, as by this mode of building, people can always find some 
shady place on a hot day. 

CROOKED STREETS. 

This also accounts for the crookedness of the streets, many 
of them being so very crooked that sunlight never finds its 
way into them — at least, I suppose this must be the reason. 
They wind and twist and crook about in every possible di- 
rection except a straight one ; get into one of them, follow it 
for a short distance, always turning the same way, and you 
will be sure to come out of it in directly the opposite direc- 
tion from where you entered it; or, in other words, keep 
turning to the east, as you follow the street, and when, you 
leave it, you will be a long way to the west of the place you 
entered. 

Among the relics in the churches of this old city is a dish 
used by our Saviour at the Last Supper, and a piece of the 
wooden cross worn by Constantine — at least they are shown 
as such. To see them, visitors must apply to a city official, as 
they belong to the city, and not to the church. 

COLUMBUS AND PAGANINI. 

In a room containing fac-similes of letters written by Co- 
lumbus, the old violin of Paganini is carefully kept in a safely 
locked closet. The memory of the great navigator must go 
hand in hand with the memory of the great fiddler. Cat- 



n6 Papers from over the Water. 

gut and tarred rope must be twisted into a dual wreath 
wherewith to crown the man who discovered a continent, 
and the brow of him whose crooked elbow made men laugh 
and weep. 

In one municipal palace there is a fine painting of the 
Crucifixion, intended for America ; but as the artist died be- 
fore it was shipped, the city of Genoa purchased it, and we 
lost it. It is an exquisite picture, and would have been a 
great acquisition. The Genoese mechanics pride themselves 
on the beauty of their iron bedsteads, which are really very 
pretty and well-made ; but I have seen no iron work here or 
elsewhere that can be compared to that seen in the old 
churches of Spain ; there the metal has been worked into 
speaking features and fine laces, and the beauty of some of 
the iron work about the altars and chapels of the magnificent 
cathedrals of that old kingdom is really wonderful. 

The people here are blessed with paper money as well as 
coin, the small denominations of which look very much like 
our fractional currency, as well they may, as they are printed 
by the American Bank Note Company of New- York. 

The shopkeepers have two prices for their wares — a price 
in paper and a price in coin. The well-dressed police carry 
large silver-mounted walking sticks as emblems of authority. 

MATRIMONIAL NOTICES. 

In glass-covered and securely locked bulletin boards, one 
may see " matrimonial notices " duly posted, signed, and 
stamped; in front of which the lady passers-by stop to see 
who are about to become happy, or otherwise. Some of the 
churches of this old city are gorgeously ornamented, inter- 
nally, with variegated marbles, elegant frescoes, rich gildings, 
and fine paintings, several of them at the expense of some 
of the wealthy families who worship in them. Genoa is a 
fine old city. 



XIV. 

Genoa to Spezzia — Beautiful Scenery — Sun and Storms on 
the Sea — Basket-shaped Tree-Tops for Grape-Vines — 
Frescoed Houses — A Spring in the Sea — Tower of Pisa — 
A Cemeteiy with Frescoed Corridors — Angel a fid Devil 
in a Fight — Horse and Cart Gearings — Baptistery, etc., 
etc., etc. 

Florence, Italy, January, 1868. 

In my last I remarked that a land trip from Nice to Ge- 
noa was one of the things to do; another is to continue on to 
Spezzia, a two days' ride. 

The first day we pass little villages up on the hill, down in 
valleys and on the sea-shore; through old towns with house 
fronts extending over the sidewalks on low arches, under 
which are little dark, dingy shops. 

BEAUTIFUL SCENES. 

The hill-sides were dotted with bright dwellings, their gay 
colors forming a striking contrast to the dark foliage of the 
olive-trees, by which they were surrounded ; scattered about 
among these dwellings were scores of churches, painted as 
gayly as the houses ; at one turn of the road we would hear 
the clear tones of a bell, away on a hill, up toward the 



n8 Papers from over the Water. 

clouds ; at another, the mellow music of one down in a val- 
ley would float up to us, as sweet as the warblings of a soar- 
ing bird. 

How the people passed to and from their churches and 
dwellings puzzled me ; for no road or path is seen by the tra- 
veler; and another thing struck me as quite noticeable, name- 
ly, the absence of cattle on the route from Nice to Spezzia. 
We did not see, in a ride of six days, more than a dozen head, 
very few sheep or goats, and comparatively few mules — in 
fact, scarcely any farm stock of any kind. 

At noon we took dinner at little nest of a place on a hill- 
top, from which we had a view of Genoa away to our right; 
in front of us lay the Mediterranean, on whose blue waters 
steamers and other vessels were scudding in every direction ; 
down under us was a sea- washed village, its beach covered 
with fishermen's smacks, uuder one of which, protected from 
the wind, a group of boys were playing cards. 

Slate quarries in that neighborhood sometimes turn out 
slates from ten to twelve feet in length. 

At night we rested at a place called Sestri, right by the sea, 
on whose pebbly beach the waves broke as musically as if 
singing love notes to the rising moon, as she came up over 
the hills back of the little village. 

A portion of our second day's ride was through different 
scenes. For a long distance we required six horses to haul 
our small carriage up the mountain. The olive and the vine 
were changed for dwarf pines, scraggy bushes, the myrtle, 
and all sorts of wild plants ; but few houses along the road ; 
occasionally we met peasants going down to the village we 
had just left, many of them carrying heavy burdens on their 
heads, while others walked by their sides and held umbrellas 
over them, but whether for protection of the person or the 
load, I could not tell. 



Storms on the Sea. 119 

STORMS ON THE SEA. 

About noon we had one of those grand views that are 
seen but once in a lifetime. We were on the top of a moun- 
tain ; hundreds of feet below us lay the sea ; back of us tall 
peaks lifted their snow-covered heads ; over us, heavy, black 
clouds hid the sun ; away on our right a heavy rain-storm 
was sending down its floods in a close, compact mass on the 
sea, as if some great water-god was pouring hundreds of Nia- 
garas on one small spot, so perpendicular were the outlines 
of the storm, and so limited the space it covered ; to the left, 
and comparatively but a short distance from this little deluge, 
the sun had broken through the black clouds that hung, pall 
like, over the sea, and threw his brightest rays on a spot of 
water about as large as that covered by the rain-storm, mak- 
ing that small spot look like a plate of polished silver in an 
ebony frame ; and as it flashed and glistened, it seemed as if 
some big boy up in the clouds was throwing the sun's rays 
from a huge mirror. In a moment the black clouds cover- 
ed this bright spot with a mantle as dark as that thrown over 
the earth on a starless night; the angry wind drove the 
storm off the sea, chased it up the mountains, and by the time 
it reached us, it became a driving snow that blinded our horses 
and blocked our way. 

Toward night the storm left us, the weather became plea- 
sant ; and as we wended our crooked, zigzag way down the 
mountains, we met a number of mules going up, loaded with 
empty wine-casks, their owners having their contents in their 
pockets, in the shape of cash received from the Spezzia wine 
dealers. 

Most of the peasants on this part of the route were clad 
in very coarse garments ; many of their houses were without 
chimneys, the smoke finding its way out between the tiles 
on the roofs or at the windows. 



120 Papers from over the Water. 

TASTE IN CULTIVATION. 

The cultivated portions of the route between Genoa and 
Spezzia are terraced with turf-covered earth, or with stone 
also covered with turf, and not with bare stones as between 
Nice and Genoa. These turf-covered terraces make the 
landscape look very beautiful; the vines hang in festoons 
from stone and wooden posts, instead of being trained to 
sticks as in France and other countries; the tree-tops are 
trimmed and trained so that they look like great baskets resting 
on poles, the central portions being removed and the outer 
branches twisted and interlaced, basket fashion ; around these 
the loving vine twines itself as lovingly as does the ivy to the 
oak. 

FRESCOED HOUSES. 

Along a portion of the route, many of the dwellings are 
fancifully frescoed; one fresco represented a man and wo- 
man at an open window in the upper part of the house, gaz- 
ing at a young lady at a window directly beneath, while 
she was laughing at them, with a thumb on her nose; an- 
other represented a young woman at a window, watering 
flowers, and another showed a bird-cage hanging in a win- 
dow, with Mrs. Pussy-cat watching the bird as patiently as 
only cats can watch, whether in life or in paint. 

The climate must be warm and dry that will admit of such 
painting on the outside of buildings ; for in a climate subject 
to the cold and moisture of ours, they would not last a year, 
while here they retain their bright colors for generations. 

SPEZZIA. 

Spezzia is a town of some ten thousand inhabitants, finely 
situated at the head of a gulf that forms the safest harbor on 
the Mediterranean, where all the fleets of Europe might find 
refuge. So well protected is it, that the first Napoleon once 



Pisa — Leaning Tower and Baptistery. 121 

contemplated making it the great naval station of his empire ; 
but the jealousies of Toulon exercised influence enough to 
prevent it. 

A SPRING IN THE SEA. 

At a short distance from the shore is one of the most re- 
markable things in nature — a fresh-water spring in a salt-wa- 
ter sea. It covers a circular spot some eight feet in diameter, 
and forms a sort of gigantic artesian well. 

At the very surface of the sea, the water from this spring is 
not fresh enough to drink; but a few inches below, it is as fresh 
as the water of any snow-covered mountain. Sometimes the 
water of the spring rises some inches above the level of the 
sea. 

Shortly after leaving Spezzia for Florence, the railway 
passes the ancient Etruscan City of Sienna, from which the 
ancestors of the Napoleons emigrated to Corsica. It was the 
port from which the famous Carrara marble was shipped to 
Rome in the days of Julius Caesar. After leaving Sienna, we 
reach Pisa, whose famous tower has been leaning over 
toward the earth for seven hundred years. 

PISA— LEANING TOWER AND BAPTISTERY. 

The cathedral at Pisa is one of the great churches of the 
middle ages, grand, massive, and impressive. It was begun 
just eight hundred years ago, and finished fifty years later. 
In it, suspended from the lofty ceiling, is the great bronze 
lamp that suggested to Galileo the theory of the pendulum. 
Near the cathedral is the baptistery, a circular stone building 
one hundred feet in diameter within the walls, which are eight 
feet thick ; and from its marble floor to the top of the cupola 
is one hundred and eighty feet; the interior is somewhat 
plain, though the pulpit is so exquisite a piece of work, that 



122 Papers from over the Water. 

at one time the city authorities employed a military guard to 
watch it day and night. 

The echo of the voice as it ascends to the top of the dome, 
is remarkable for the mellowness of the sound and the length 
of its continuance. As its name implies, this building is 
used only for baptismal purposes, it being the custom here- 
about to have an edifice especially for that sacrament. 

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has long been a world's won- 
der ; it is a circular stone building fifty-three feet in diameter 
and one hundred and seventy-nine feet high, and leans 
thirteen feet beyond the perpendicular. It was erected for a 
bell-tower, and is still used for that purpose, there being sev- 
eral bells on its top, the heaviest being placed on the upper 
side. One of them weighs 12,000 pounds, and used to be toll- 
ed when criminals were led to execution. The tower looks as 
if it might tumble over any day, and it feels, as you go up its 
winding stairs, as if it would fall before you could get down 
from its slanting top. It is not very hard work to ascend it; 
but the sensation of going down when going up, as is appa- 
rently the case, when walking up the steps on the lower side, 
is very disagreeable ; in fact, some persons can not go to the 
top on that account. The view from the top is very fine ; 
beneath you is the old city of Pisa j in the distance tall moun- 
tains lift their white heads; the Mediterranean spreads its blue 
waters; while Leghorn and other towns lift up their church 
towers to give beauty to the scene. 

CAMPO SANTO. 

The Campo Santo, or cemetery at Pisa, is a most interest- 
ing place to visit. It was founded by an archbishop in the 
early part of the twelfth century, who, on being driven from 
Palestine by the followers of the Prophet, under Saladin, 
loaded fifty of his ships with earth from Mount Calvary, 



Sectarian Pictures. 123 

which, it was said, would completely decompose a human 
body in twenty-four hours — a legend which seems to be be- 
lieved, if we may judge by the absence of graves or other 
evidences of interment in that portion of the Campo where 
this earth was placed. 

Around this spot of Palestinic earth is the building that 
contains the sepulchral monuments that make the place fa- 
mous. It is over four hundred feet long, one hundred and 
forty feet wide, and the corridors that extend around it on 
the inside (and which open on to the spot of earth brought 
from Palestine) are thirty feet wide and nearly fifty feet high 
from floor to roof. The corridors extend around the four 
sides of the open plot of ground, and measure, in a continu- 
ous line, over eleven hundred feet, are lined with old statues, 
sarcophagi, tombs, and busts ; among others a bust of Julius 
Caesar, which commissioners sent by the present Emperor of 
the French to examine it, have pronounced a veritable like- 
ness of the great Roman. 

SECTARIAN PICTURES. 

The walls of these lengthy corridors are covered with fres- 
coes of the most interesting and peculiar character, scriptural, 
historical, and allegorical. 

One represents the Last Judgment. From the open graves 
the bodies are coming forth, the good on one side, the bad 
on the other. Among those coming up on the good side is 
a fnar, who, on being discovered by the Archangel, is seized 
by the hair and taken to the other side, where he belongs. 

The different classes of men seem to be about equally 
divided between the two sides, kings, priests, noble and com- 
mon people, all mixed up together. On one side joy, on the 
other sorrow, as the words " Come," or " Depart," fall on the 
ear of the judged. 



124 Papers- from over the Water. 

m 

Another representing the Triumph of Death, shows an an^ 
gel and his Satanic majesty contending for a fat priest; one 
has him by the head,, the other by the feet ; one claiming his 
soul for the bliss due the righteous, the other for the misery 
that awaits the wicked. 

The people of Pisa are the most polite and civil that I have 
met anywhere. 

The ticket-sellers at the railway stations in Italy will give 
no change for paper money ; the traveler must make the ex- 
act amount of his fare. Suppose your ticket is seven francs, 
you pass in a ten-franc note, the whole of it is retained; but 
for coin change is speedily furnished. Paper money is not 
popular. 

FL ORENCE CA R T-HORSES. 

The mode of gearing horses to carts in this section would 
make a New-York cartman laugh. The saddle is a little 
thing with a high, hook-shaped neck projecting over the 
horse's shoulders. The boom or* shafts are on a level with 
the top of this saddle or the back of the horse ; and to keep 
the cart from tipping up and letting the load roll, off behind,, 
the booms are tied down with a small rope under the animal's 
belly, often cutting through the skin ; as the weight is more 
behind than before the wheels, the whole load is thus hauled 
by the horse instead of being partly carried, as on our Ameri- 
can carts. Florence has many of the prettiest little ponies 
ever seen. They are used for light, two-wheeled carriages,, 
with which they make pretty rapid- headway. 

A PALACE. 

On visiting the Pitti Palace, in a part of which is one of 
the great picture-galleries that make Florence famous, we 
were, as a special few, (silver in the eye of the custodian,) 






A7tie?'ican Sculptors. 125 

shown through private apartments that had just been pre- 
pared for one of the king's sons who has recently taken a 
wife. Of course, like all palatial apartments, they were very 
grand ; but with their grandeur they had more of a comforta- 
ble, home-like look than any others I have visited. The 
fire-places were full of wood, ready for the match \ nice, clean 
towels were on the racks, the furniture was uncovered and 
every thing appeared cozy and cheerful, and, for a wonder, the 
floors in many of the rooms were carpeted. In one of the 
rooms was a full-size figure (in marble) of Michael Angelo 
when a boy of fifteen. The young genius is represented 
astride a block of marble, mallet and chisel in hand, cutting a 
face on the block he was sitting on. The face thus cut by 
that boy now hangs in one of the galleries of Florence. The 
countenance of the young sculptor is one of the most expres- 
sive that I have ever seen in marble; every feature is 
wrought up to the greatest intensity of earnestness and anxi- 
ety. 

AMERICAN SCULPTORS. 

Our American sculptors in Florence are all busy — Powers 
on busts, and an ideal piece representing " the last of the 
Tribe," symbolical of the vanishing races of American Indi- 
ans. Mead has some seventy men at work on marble orna- 
ments for one of our buildings at Washington, and also has 
under way a splendid group representing Columbus appeal- 
ing to Isabella for aid to prosecute his voyages. It is to go 
to America. Hart has in the clay an unfinished piece he calls 
" Woman's Triumph," representing a beautiful female taking 
from Cupid the last arrow from his quiver, the idea being that 
woman must be won by love and not by assaults. He has just 
completed a grand bust of Jackson, from a cast which he 
took at the Hermitage in 1839. It is a capital likeness of 



126 Papers fro?n over the Water. 

the old hero, whom I saw on his way to Tennessee at the 
close of his presidential career, and one of the most remark- 
able pieces of sculpture I ever saw. It ought to find a home 
in the land he loved so well. 

CHURCHES. 

The churches of Florence are among the greatest in Italy. 
The Cathedral, an enormous building of white and black 
marble, contains many fine statues and paintings, and its 
dome is the largest in the world, though not so high as that 
'of St. Peter's. It was this dome that gave Michael Angelo 
the seed from which he reared that great wonder. 

The dome of the Florence Cathedral is one hundred and 
thirty-eight feet in diameter, and from the cornice on which 
it rests it is one hundred and thirty-three feet in height, is 
octagonal in shape, and beautifully frescoed. 

Adjoining the Cathedral is the bell-tower, also of black and 
white marble, ornamented with elegant bas-reliefs of scrip- 
tural and allegorical subjects. It is a square building, as 
large at the top as on the ground, and is two hundred and 
seventy-five feet high. From its top the traveler gets a 
magnificent view of the city and its suburbs. 

BAPTISTERY. 

Near the Cathedral is the Baptistery, the inner shell or 
walls of which were erected over a thousand years ago. Its 
bronze doors, covered with magnificent bas-reliefs, Michael 
Angelo asserted, were good enough for the gates of Paradise. 
The building is of white and black marble, is highly ornament- 
ed with paintings, frescoes, statues of marble and wood; 
its great cupola is covered with mosaics, and its floor is one 
great mosaic of elaborate workmanship, colored marbles be- 
ing worked into all possible shapes. 



Baptistery. 127 

In this ancient building all the children born in the city are 
baptized, the number averaging about a dozen per day, the 
highest number occurring in December, February, and March, 
and the lowest in June. Females outnumber the males 
about thirteen to the hundred. When we visited it, there 
was a group of women waiting their turn to present their in- 
fants for baptism. Some were poor and some rich. Some 
had their darlings wrapped in common "baby blankets;" 
others in blankets of the finest material, fringed with gold 
lace, with the initials of the little one embroidered in the cen- 
tre in gold letters, large enough for a business sign — in fact, 
much larger than letters on many of the business signs of 
Florence. 

This city is famous for its mosaic work. In one of the gal- 
leries there is a mosaic table that required the labor of twen- 
ty-two men for twenty-five years. It is over two hundred 
years old. If any of our readers think that this labor might 
have been employed to a better purpose, I shall agree with 
them. 

Florence is a beautiful city, its clean streets are paved with 
large, thick slabs of stone, almost as large as the flag- 
ging of our New-York sidewalk ; scarcely a beggar is seen ; 
the people appear healthy, and the men are better looking 
than the handsome women. Many of its streets are wide, and 
lined with the most substantial buildings I have seen, the 
Tuscan architecture being of a heavy, massive character. 
Few cities excel Florence in appearance. Its suburbs are plea- 
ant, its people polite ; its drives beautiful, and the bridges 
that span the river that divides it durable and handsome. 



XV. 



Pictures — Sculpture — Warming- Pans — Parliamentary Beth 
— Cats — Churches — Alosaics — Bridges — Trotting-Buggy 
— Mule's Shoes — A Good Society — Street Cleaning, etc. y 
etc., etc. 

Florence, Italy, February, 1868. 

I shall not tire the reader with a long description of the 
picture-galleries of the city. The wonderful beauties and 
beautiful wonders contained in them, wonders on canvas, in 
marble, and bronze, have been praised and written about for 
generations. It seems to me that the pictures and statues 
in this city of less than 150,000 people, if placed side by 
side in one continuous line, would reach around our Manhat- 
tan island; among them are some works that can only be 
admired, not equaled. 

The largest number of the paintings are of a religious cha- 
racter: Crucifixions, Entombments, Madonnas, Holy Fami- 
lies, Adorations, Descents from the Cross, Martyrdoms, As- 
censions, Resurrections, Annunciations, etc. These are re- 
presented in every possible style, color, shape, and mode of 
grouping that ingenuity could devise or zeal prompt, through 
continuous generations of men and successive schools of art ; 
some of them are pleasing, some otherwise; some rivet the 
attention of the spectator by their lovely naturalness ; others 
repel him by their unnatural ugliness. 



A Way to keep Warm. 129 

ANCIENT SCULPTURE. 

The most celebrated of the works in marble are allegori- 
cal; the subjects being from the mythology of nations that 
died long before Christianity was born. Mercury with his 
winged feet, Apollos, Venuses, Cupids, etc., meet one at 
every turn, some of them with forms and features as perfect 
as if a hundred generations had not come and gone since 
they left their native quarries. 

MODERN SCULPTURE. 

Our American sculptor Ball has about completed a long- 
worked-on model of Eve. The mother of the race is repre- 
sented as just from the hands of the Creator, stepping into 
the world; she is suddenly arrested in her first steps by 
some pleasing sound ; she raises one hand to throw her long 
and heavy tresses from the listening ear, that she may catch 
every note of Eden's music ; pleasure, hope, surprise, joy, hap- 
piness, are beaming on her beautiful face. The figure is life 
size, exquisitely modeled, graceful, lovable. 

It was ordered by a New- York gentleman, now deceased, 
whose heirs intend to sell it when it is in marble. I hope it 
will find a home in our city. 

American sculptors come to Italy for education and good 
marble, but they have to send home for clay to work their 
models in, the best being found near Baltimore. 

A WAY TO KEEP WARM. 

Scarcely a public building in Florence is provided with 
fire-places or other means of heating; indeed, all the stores, 
shops, etc., are in the same condition, and as all are con- 
structed of stone, with floors and partition walls of stone 
or brick, they are very cold and uncomfortable in the win- 



130 Papers from over the Water. 

ter. To provide a little artificial warmth, the people carry 
a few live embers about with them, in small earthen jars, 
holding about two quarts, having an earthen handle or bale 
like the bale of a common water-pail, the bale in this case 
forming a part of the jar, and always up, half-hoop fashion. 
With these little jars they walk about, holding their cold fin- 
gers over them, or carrying them under their outer garments 
to warm their persons, and on going to bed at night, they 
hang them on the inside of pyramid-shaped baskets and place 
them in the bed to warm the icy-cold linen sheets, (no cotton 
sheets in this country.) It is a common sight to see business 
men carrying these warming-jars about their stores and of- 
fices, but when a customer drops in, they set them down 
quite speedily. Some of them are quite pretty in their fancy 
coats of many colors, pretty enough for ornaments. That's 
the way the Florentines try to keep warm. 

DEPUTIES. 

The Chamber of Deputies is not quite so well behaved as 
it might be. Members hiss a speaker when unpleasant 
words are said, and the presiding officer rings a bell about as 
large as the dinner-bell of a country tavern, when he desires 
to call members to order. While we were present, the mem- 
bers were so disorderly that the unfortunate officer had to 
keep the bell going much of the time. The Chamber is 
composed of fine-looking men. 

CATS AND MICE. 

If cats live on mice, and the condition of the cats depends 
on the condition of the mice, then our adage, " as poor as a 
church mouse," is not applicable to church mice in Italy, for 
the largest and fattest cats I have ever seen are those about 



Street- Cleaning. 131 

the churches here, in one of which I saw a dozen, some of 
them almost as large as the little ponies in the streets of 
Florence. 

STREETS AND SIDEWALKS. 

The people in many of these European cities and towns 
walk in the middle of the streets. There are comparatively 
but few vehicles to interfere with this custom, and most of 
their streets are well paved and clean, affording as good walk- 
ing as the sidewalks, which are often narrow, (and in many 
streets there are none at all,) men, women, children, horses, 
and donkeys, all move along together. 

MOSAICS. 

In the government mosaic works in Florence, there is a 
mosaic table, about 26 by 44 inches in size, the price of 
which is $24,000. It is a pretty little thing, made of costly 
stones of all sorts and colors, beautifully worked into pretty 
shapes. To look at this toy as it might stand in your parlor, 
would cost you something over $2000 a year in interest, 
taxes, etc. Cheap amusement, if your servants did not 
spoil it. 

The house once occupied by Michael Angelo contains 
many relics of that great sculptor, painter, architect, poet, 
and military commander ; mementoes and souvenirs that in- 
terest such as have a liking for them. The works he wrought 
interest me more than the tools he wrought with. 

STREE T-CLEA NING. 

The street-cleaning system of Florence might be copied 
with advantage by New- York. A certain portion of the city 
is assigned to a small gang of men, sometimes only one or 
two, who are provided with brooms, scrapers, and covered 



1^2 Papers from over the Water. 

hand-carts, for the removal of the sweepings ; they are re- 
quired to keep these portions clean, not merely to drag their 
brooms over the pavement so carefully as not to disturb the 
dirt, as is the custom with our street-sweepers, but to get the 
dirt up, and if the broom won't do it, they must try the scraper 
with which the brooms are provided, and they do it. Where 
the distance to the dumping-ground is long, covered horse- 
carts take the place of hand-carts. The men are paid to 
work, and are compelled to work for their pay. 

Our city horse-shoers would be amused with the shoes put 
on mules' feet in Italy. They often project from a half to a whole 
inch beyond the foot, all around, and on the hinder feet, the 
heels of the shoes sometimes project three or four inches be- 
yond the foot. Horses are shod in a better manner. 

CHURCH FRONTS. 

Many of the churches in Florence have been standing 
hundreds of years with their fronts unfinished, nothing but 
rough masonry or plastered brick-work appearing on the 
fronts of some whose interiors are marvels of beauty and ex- 
travagance of finish. The reason given for this apparent neg- 
lect is, that finished church fronts are or were subject to a 
heavy tax, and to save this tax they were not finished. 

GOOD BRIDGES. 

The bridges in Europe are durable structures. It is seldom 
that one is carried away. One of the bridges here, some 
three hundred feet long, is known as the " Jewelers' Bridge," 
from the fact that both its sides are covered with jewelers' 
shops, the centre being used by carriages and people on foot. 
American bridges are not made strong enough to " keep 
store " on. When we get older and take better care of hu- 
manity than we do of money, we shall make stronger bridges, 



Afi Excellent Society. 133 

and manage railways and ferries better than we do now : in 
the mean time, we pay the just penalties of our mismanage- 
ment in loss of limb and life. 

America is a great country and our people are smart, know 
something, but America is not all the world, neither do our 
people possess all the knowledge of all mankind, and the 
sooner we can realize those two facts, and act accordingly, 
the sooner we shall get on toward true greatness. 

One of the most important things we have to learn is, the 
necessity of protecting life — taking care of property is second- 
ary. 

I have not met an American traveler here that has said he 
feels as safe on our railways and bridges as he does on those 
of Europe. We shall do better in the future. 

AN EXCELLENT SOCIETY. 

Meeting some twelve or fifteen men wearing black gowns, 
broad-brimmed hats, with black masks or hoods over their 
faces, apart of whom were carrying a covered bier on their 
shoulders, I inquired what they were, and learned that they 
were members of the society " Misericordia," a charitable or- 
ganization composed of the best citizens of Florence, whose 
duty it is to convey the sick poor to the hospitals, to assist per- 
sons in case of accident, and to secure Christian burial for 
the friendless dead. It also gives small marriage portions to 
indigent females. It is held in great respect by the people, 
and when its members pass along the street on their Chris- 
tian duties, the men raise their hats and the military present 
arms. 

The entire city is divided into districts, to each of which a 
certain number of the brotherhood is assigned ; there are some 
forty always ready for duty, and when the great bell of the 



134 Papers from over the Water. 

cathedral tower announces that they are needed, each mem- 
ber instantly leaves whatever he may be doing, hastens to his 
post, and does his duty. 

The society was established over six hundred years ago ; 
and has counted among its members grand dukes and every 
grade of official and other honors known to Florence. Its 
first moneys were acquired by the collection of fines volunta- 
rily imposed for profane swearing ; and as the usefulness of 
the society became apparent, the citizens generously contrib- 
uted to its support, so that it never lacks money. In times 
of pestilence or epidemics, like the cholera, it is one of the 
greatest " ministering angels " that the city has. Our cities 
would honor themselves and benefit humanity by imitating 
its virtues. 

OLD VEHICLE. 

In the Egyptian Museum there is a little wooden-wheeled 
chariot, twelve hundred years older than Christianity. Pos- 
sibly it may have belonged to some " fast man " of that re- 
mote period ; at all events, it is light enough for a modern 
" trotting buggy." It has no back or seat, the driver had to 
"stand." The wheels show that they were once covered 
with leather. 

Walking about the streets of an evening, I noticed several 
men with lanterns which they carried close to the ground, as 
if looking for something ; and sure enough they were looking 
very carefully for discarded " cigar stumps," which are col- 
lected, subjected to some chemical process, and made into 
smoking tobacco. 

Is any of the famous " Turkish" smoking tobacco, for 
which such high prices are paid by American smokers, 
manufactured from that sort of raw material ? 

" Keeping up appearances " at the expense of comfort is 



About Churches. 135 

not confined to the dwellers in "brown-stone fronts" in 
New- York, for Florentine fashionables, it is said, put up with 
poor tables and other deficiencies for the sake of a carriage 
establishment and a drive along the river in fashionable 
hours. 

ABOUT CHURCHES. 

For the information of such Protestant or other readers 
as are not familiar with the Catholic churches of the Old 
World, I desire to say a few words. 

Our American churches of all denominations are usually 
small, well-lighted, have comfortable seats, wooden floors, 
(often carpeted,) are warmed in winter, bare of ornamental 
work without and within, and generally as comfortable as 
the worshipers can desire. I speak of them in the aggre- 
gate. 

In Europe all this is completely reversed. Here the 
churches (Catholic) are large, dimly lighted, have no pews, 
slips or seats permanently placed, though sometimes chairs 
are provided for such as will pay for them on using; 
the floors are always of stone or brick, never warmed, are 
elaborately covered with ornamental work outside and in- 
side, and generally very uncomfortable. Their windows are 
usually small, few in number, of stained glass, and placed 
high up in the walls. It requires good eyes and "large 
print " to enable a person to read in them. Around the sides, 
next to the outer walls, are rooms called chapels, some of 
these, especially in the Spanish churches, as large as an Ame- 
rican country " meeting-house." Each of these chapels has 
its altar, over which is a figure of Christ, or the Virgin, or 
some favorite saint. They are embellished with ornaments 
of all sorts, those of the Virgin always having the most and 
the richest; her chapels, too, have the largest number of wor- 
shipers. 



136 Papers from over the Water. 

In the Italian churches the high altar, or the one devoted 
to the general uses of church service, is at one end of the 
main building, but in the Spanish churches, it is always in or 
near the centre, an arrangement that almost destroys the ef- 
fect of their enormous size and marvelous ornamentation. 
These high altars are elaborately decorated, have costly 
paintings or sculpture over them, and the fronts of the tables 
on which the priests officiate are often of solid silver, some- 
times weighing hundreds of pounds. 

In some of the Spanish churches, the space back of the 
high altar is covered with life-size figures in wood, and many of 
these figures being painted in natural colors, they look as if 
so many living men and women were fastened to the walls. 
Such ornamented altar-backs occasionally cover a space 
equal to a surface of forty to fifty feet square. In one 
part of the building, what we would call a " wing," the 
choir is placed, surrounded by wooden or iron partitions, 
through or over which the people look at the church officials 
when engaged in chanting or singing. 

In the Spanish and some other churches, the seats in these 
choirs are elaborately covered or ornamented with the most 
beautiful wood carvings, perfect pieces of exquisite work ; the 
human figures on them look as if they were about to speak, 
so life-like do they seem; and the animals, trees, foliage, bat- 
tle-scenes, crucifixions, martyrdoms, etc., which they represent, 
are wonderful in their design and execution. 

A church with less than two organs is seldom seen ; some 
have three : they are always up in some high part of the 
building, and as they send forth their music, it reverberates 
around the huge columns, floats away up into the arches and 
frescoed domes, penetrates every chapel, and fills every -ear. 

The churches are always open, people are passing in and 



About Churches. 137 

out all the time, and are always seen kneeling in chapels, de- 
voutly repeating their prayers. 

In some churches the chapels are inclosed with high iron 
railings, and locked at certain times. This is usually the case 
in Spain; in other countries they are often opened; often 
these chapels connect with each other by open doorways. 

In many chapels there is a confessional, or place to which 
people go to confess to the priest. It is commonly a small 
square box, like a sentry box, with a place for the priest, (who 
can not be seen by the person confessing,) and another for 
the penitent. Occasionally the name of the officiating priest 
is painted on the confessional. 

The money expended for the paintings, sculptures, carv- 
ings, ornaments of gold and silver, precious stones, costly 
marbles, and fine iron-work in the churches of this Old World 
would suffice, I should think, to pay the national debts of all 
the governments on earth, especially if the cost of the 
churches themselves is included. 






XVI. 

Florence to Naples — Things in Naples — Sibyl's Cave — Vesu- 
vius — Hot Lava — Queer Teams — Droll Vehicles — Pom- 
peii — Horseshoeing — Letter- Writers — Poor Priests — 
Money- Changers — Crust of Extinct Volcano — Under- 
ground Road — Orange Groves and Singing Birds — 
Lamplight Burials— Night Scenes, etc. 

Naples, Italy, January, 1868. 
We left Florence about ten o'clock, on a dark, rainy 
night, for Naples, on our way passing by the walls of Rome. 
For some two hours before reaching the Eternal City the 
country is in a fine state of cultivation; the fields are divided 
by light fences made of posts the size of a man's wrist, driven 
into the ground, some four feet apart, and on these two 
small poles or slats are nailed at right angles, the slats being 
some eighteen inches asunder. Such fences will stop neither 
cattle nor sheep, and what they were made for I could not 
discover. There were a great many large flocks of coarse- 
wooled sheep, lots of small, poor horses, and numerous 
herds of cattle. The cattle were nearly all of a light gray or 
mouse color, and had enormous horns. After passing Rome 
we saw but little stock of any kind, though the land was 
generally very good. Occasionally, the railway traverses 
large groves or orchards of oak-trees, greatly resembling the 
oak openings of Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan. 

NAPLES. 

The city of Naples is an interesting place to visit, not so 



Droll Teams — Queer Carriages. 139 

much, perhaps, for itself as for its surroundings, every foot 
in its vicinity being covered with historic and legendary 
interest. Here are Pompeii, Herculaneum, Vesuvius, Lake 
Avernus, Sibyl's Cave, and Pozzuoli, the place where St. 
Paul first entered Italy, on his way to Rome. In fact, this 
region is the locale of much of old history and half of ancient 
mythology. 

But I shall not tire the reader with very much of these 
things, for I know but little about them, though, of course, 
one has to refer to them in writing of what he sees. 

DROLL TEAMS— QUEER CARRIAGES. 

We started from Naples, on a bright winter morning, for 
the dead city. The road is one continuous village, or suc- 
cession of villages, and was covered with the drollest vehicles, 
drawn by the oddest teams. In some instances, a large, 
poor ox was between the shafts or booms of a cart, his yoke 
being fastened to the shafts, outside of which, and geared 
with the ox, would be a poor old horse and a cow, or a cow 
and a donkey; sometimes a cow would be between the 
shafts, in place of an ox; cows, oxen, horses, mules, and 
donkeys, hitched together in any way that the owner or 
driver saw fit, without regard to kind or size, and generally 
in triplets ! Mixed in with these teams were carriages for 
passengers. These were usually two-wheeled vehicles, 
drawn by one horse. The wheels were from five to seven 
feet in diameter; the body or floor, without sides, very long. 
Over the axle-tree were two enormOus old-fashioned C springs, 
to which was suspended a seat, so high from the floor that 
no human legs could be found long enough to reach down 
to it. At the hindmost part of the floor of the vehicle was a 
shelf, or board, for people to stand on. The driver sat on 
one of the shafts— so did some of the passengers; some 



140 Papers from over the Water. 

occupied the high seat, some stood on the back shelf, others 
sat under the seat, others all over the floor, the machine 
holding from twelve to twenty persons, all drawn by one 
poor old, decrepit horse, on whose sore back would be a 
harness-saddle from two to four stories high, each story dif- 
fering from the one under it — one partly square, another 
round, another pyramid-shaped, and all covered with bright- 
ly-polished brass, and capped with a little spire, from the top 
of which would be a gayly painted metal ornament, like a 
flag or crescent, making altogether a queer-looking piece of 
horse furniture, from two to three feet high, and heavy 
enough for an entire harness. The passengers were women, 
children, priests, soldiers, sailors, etc., talking, laughing, and 
making as merry as if the poor beast was having as good a 
time as themselves. 

Along the route people were spinning flax, in the way it 
was spun when spinning was invented. Occasionally an 
ancient loom was seen at work. 

MACARONI. 

But the great article of manufacture was macaroni. This 
was seen hanging out to dry all along the route. Some of 
it looked quite clean, and was hanging before decent-look- 
ing houses, and some not. The people did not seem very 
clean, more especially in the suburbs of Naples, the home 
of the lazzaroni. We did not enter any of the buildings 
where the macaroni is made; if we had, there might have 
been some slight decrease in the demand for that article. 

A MARBLE SAINT. 

On our way we passed a marble statue of St. Januarius, 
(the patron saint of Naples.) The saint has his face turned 
toward Vesuvius ; his right arm is raised, as if commanding 



Pompeii^ the Dead City. 141 

the fiery mountain to keep away from his favorite city. If 
the saint's commands are obeyed by the volcano, might he 
not stretch his authority somewhat for the benefit of people 
outside of Naples, and order it to let other places alone ? 

The time may not be far distant when Naples will meet 
the fate of Pompeii, notwithstanding the commands of its 
patron saint. A short distance east of Naples is Vesuvius, 
sending forth its hot lava. West of the city, and about as 
far off as Vesuvius, is the crater of Solfatara, now sending 
forth streams of scalding vapor, as it always does when 
Vesuvius is at work. Between these two is Naples, a city 
beautiful to look upon, now that it can be seen \ but how 
long will it remain so ? 

POMPEII, THE DEAD CITY. 

In a short time we reached Pompeii, the city that died 
and was buried — deeply buried — ere Christianity had thrown 
off its swaddling-garments ; buried ere the blood was dry 
on the cross of Christianity's Founder ; buried — deeply bu- 
ried — until that great truth has grown to man's estate, and 
covered half the earth with its teachings ; buried in the days 
when Rome, whose vassal she was, was mistress of the 
world j buried when to be a "Roman Citizen" was to be 
cosmopolite; buried when the two words " Roman Citizen" 
were the passport to all the kingdoms of the earth ; buried 
— deeply buried — while old Rome passed down the stream 
of Time into the great gulf that covers the nations ; buried 
— deeply buried — until to be a " Roman Citizen " was to be 
a scorn and a by-word ; buried — deeply buried — while great 
empires and mighty peoples have come and gone, like 
cloud-shadows on the sea. Pompeii, the city that, sitting 
on the plain, could be hidden as under a veil ; the city that 
was hidden by a veil not made by hands ; the city that was 



142 Papers from over the Water. 

covered by fire and ashes from the great furnaces that are 
always burning ; Pompeii, the city that was dead and buried 
while mother-earth saw more than fifty generations of her 
children born and die \ Pompeii is to-day basking in the sun, 
waiting for the children of those who once occupied her 
dwellings and walked her streets, to come, and once again 
make her walls musical with the voices of men; waiting, 
with the stones of her streets as clean and bright as in the 
days when the great men of the olden time trod their well- 
worn surfaces ; waiting, as patiently and trustingly under the 
smoke of burning Vesuvius, as if belching mountains had 
never done harm to her or her children ; Pompeii, the old city 
that has been resurrected by the men of the present, tells won- 
derful tales of the men of the past. 

In wandering about its narrow streets, peering into its 
tenantless houses, one almost expects to meet some of its 
people, and to be " ordered out of the house." 

The frescoes on the walls are fresh and bright, the marble- 
work looks new and clean ; the jars and tables of the wine- 
shops hardly seem old ; in the bakers' shops, the convexed 
and concaved stone mills look as if they could grind the corn 
"to-day as well as ever;" the household utensils (moved to 
Naples for safe-keeping) look good enough to use ; in fact, 
it would require but little labor to put the old city once 
more in a condition to " keep house," notwithstanding its 
heavy coat of ashes and cinders hid it from the sun for 
eighteen hundred years. 

The walls of the houses are very thick, the streets are nar- 
row, the sidewalks very high above the carriage-way, (which 
shows the mark of wheels;) the cross-walks are large stones, 
set up edgewise across the street, on a level with the side- 
walks, with space between them for vehicles and animals. 
The shops are small and dark, just as they are to-day in Na- 



Vesuvius. 143 

pies — in fact, as they are in all these southern towns. The 
paving-stones of the streets are large and flat, as in Naples 
and Florence, but the houses, instead of being tall, like those 
of to-day, are low — mostly one-story — some of two, and very 
seldom of three ; in fact, so rare were three-story houses in 
Pompeii, that only one has been found, and that is known 
as " the house of three stories." 

The work of exhuming still goes on, though but slowly, 
the working force consisting of a few men and boys, under 
a government official. 

The brick-work just uncovered looks as clean and new as 
if laid but yesterday, and the frescoes on the walls of houses 
recently exhumed look as bright as if just left by the painter. 

When any thing is found worth preserving, it is removed to 
the Naples Museum. A few weeks ago a large money-diest 
was dug up, and is now in the museum. It contains a few cop- 
per coins, and looks very much like the iron boxes of to-day, 
with the addition of a very fine coat of rust. Many articles 
found at Pompeii are of the same character as those in use 
with us, especially the steelyards, the counterpart of which 
can be found in almost every farmhouse in America. 

I have visited no place that interested me so much as this 
old, dead, buried, and resurrected city of Pompeii, and I shall 
never forget its strong old houses, its ruined temples, its well- 
worn pavements, its beautiful frescoes, its fine marbles, its 
broken fountains, its old wine-shops, its " street of abundance," 
its prison-vaults, its small, dark shops, its high sidewalks, and 
the thousand things that carry one back two thousand years 
into the dead past. 

VESUVIUS. 

Vesuvius has a bad " breaking out" just now. By day, 
great clouds of white, steam-like smoke (not black smoke, as 
in pictures) crown its burning summit, while small vapory 



144 Papers from over the Water. 

clouds float up from its sides, marking the courses of the lava 
streams; but when night covers the mountain, this white 
smoke, colored by the burning crater and molten lava, be- 
comes a rosy-pink, and as it floats up toward the dark 
clouds, it looks as if the high-priests of the volcano were 
sending up incense from their subterranean altars, while un- 
der this bright smoke the red hot lava moves down the 
mountain in a dozen streams, seething, burning, grating as it 
goes. 

HOT LAVA. 

On leaving the crater, the lava moves very rapidly ; but as it 
flows down the mountain, the surface gradually cools, and 
it moves more slowly ; but even after the surface becomes 
cold, black, and hard enough to bear the weight of a man, the 
under side will be hot enough to keep moving. 

By day, the smoking mountain looks like a huge coal-pit in 
which the world's supply of charcoal is being burned; at 
night, when the red streams glide down its sides, it looks as 
if the fire had broken through the covering of the pit, and all 
was going to ashes. 

We paid a visit to the lava-currents by night, and the sum- 
mit from that point was worth seeing. 

We were near enough to see cinders and great stones 
thrown high into the air with a noise like that of artillery. 
Running lava is better to see at a safe distance than to feel as 
you walk on its cooled surface ; the greater the distance the 
better for boots, as mine testify ; and a ride down from Vesu- 
vius by torchlight is a very romantic thing to do, but not 
very safe or agreeable. When the fire gets a-going in the 
forests on the mountains of Pennsylvania or West Virginia, 
covering as it sometimes does thousands of acres, it makes a 
grander show than does Vesuvius with its lava ; but as that 



Customs of the Naples People. 145 

is simply an American affair, not an eruption of a volcano, 
but few know or care any thing about it. 

CUSTOMS OF THE NAPLES PEOPLE. 

Different countries, different customs. Here two men 
take hold of a common " buck-saw " to saw wood. In our 
country, one man would, with the same saw, work up more 
wood than the two men here. Labor is cheap in Naples. 

In our country, one man can shoe a horse. Here it takes 
two ; one, the owner or groom, must hold the foot while the 
smith puts on the shoe. 

At convenient places about the streets are little tables, at 
which men sit to write letters for those who can't do their 
own writing, and around these tables are persons telling the 
" scriveners " what they want written. Were these " letter- 
writers " as talkative as they might be, they could tell some 
queer tales ; but, like the doctors, they never betray family 
secrets. 

The money-changers have their tables, for the sale of small 
copper change, also on the street corners, and near the pub- 
lic markets. Change is scarce, and these " out-door brok- 
ers " drive a good trade. 

Almost as plenty as money-changers are the lottery dealers, 
one of whom can be found on almost every block. 

Lottery and other gaming is popular in this part of the 
world. 

There are more ragged, dirty people in Naples than in any 
other city I have ever visited, and the beggars are the most 
persistent. 

The priests, also, look very poor and seedy, and seem to 
have hard work to get a living. 

The Italian hotel-keepers have so much American patron- 
age that they compliment us by giving their hotels American 



146 Papers from over the Water. 

names, such as "American," "Washington," "New-York," 
etc. Nothing like flattery. 

The streets of these old cities are admirably paved ; and 
the contrast between them and the streets of our own city 
in this particular is so marked that I can not refrain from 
speaking of it often. 

If we can't show well-paved streets, we can show much 
better horses to our public vehicles than any other city I 
have visited, especially this one ; for here the horses are the 
poorest and worst specimens I ever saw, always excepting 
the few poor beasts that figure in Spanish bull-fights. 

SIBYL'S CAVE. 

The Sibyl's Cave, about which so much has been said for 
a thousand years or more, is a great, dark, gloomy cavern ; 
and the famous " River Styx," which is in it, is a miserable 
little pool or stream, hardly big enough for boys in petticoats 
to sail their toy boats on ; and the famous Lake Avernus, that 
ancient and modern poets have had ecstasies over, is about 
large enough for an artificial fish-pond, on a private gentle- 
man's country-seat. The ruins of ancient temples in their 
vicinity, however, are really great, and show that their old 
builders knew how to erect massive structures, even if they 
did " make a fuss" about other matters, such as small lakes, 
caves, etc. 

The old city of Pozzuoli, where St. Paul landed on his 
way to Rome, is to-day as beautifully situated as in those by- 
gone days, and its people probably as dirty and as much in 
need of the " light of the Word " as they were in the days 
of the apostles ; at least I should think so from their looks. 

OLD CRATER. 

A stone thrown on the crust of earth that covers the old 
crater of the Solfatara volcano produces a sound of hollow- 



Underground Road. 147 

ness underneath that makes the listening stranger wish him- 
self on firmer earth ; while the smell of sulphur and the hot 
steam that rushes out of it reminds one of the " mouth of 
hell." 

I don't like volcanoes, even when they seem to be dead. 
They have an uncomfortable way of coming to life, and I 
was glad to leave old Solfatara and his sulphury steam. 

UNDERGROUND ROAD. 

To reach this old crater, the Sibyl's Cave, the Villa of 
Csesar, etc., we have to go through a tunnel a half-mile long. 
When we passed through, it was filled with donkeys, goats, 
carriages, mules, people on foot, oxen geared to carts, with 
minute donkeys and lame horses, peasants with great loads 
on their heads, country gigs with the high seat on C springs, 
priests on foot and on donkeys ; the bells on the goats were 
jingling, the donkeys were braying, the carts were rumbl- 
ing, the people chatting, the dust flying; the great lamps 
away up toward the arch of the tunnel (seventy-four feet 
high) threw a dim light on the confused and confusing mass; 
forming altogether the strangest mixture of life underground 
that I £ver saw. 

About half-way through this subterranean street there is a 
small shrine or chapel, cut in the rock, before which a lighted 
lamp always hangs. For some distance before entering the 
tunnel from the end nearest Naples, people live in caves made 
in the rocky earth, such as we saw occupied by the gypsies 
at Granada, only these did not seem quite so clean and com- 
fortable as those. 

Noticing men covering some of the streets of Naples 
with sand on a Sunday morning, I learned that a parade of 
troops was to take place on that day, and the sand was 
spread on the smooth pavement to enable them to march 



148 Papers from over the Water. 

without slipping. Messrs. Managers of parades in New- 
York may take a hint from this. 

SORRENTO. 

A few miles from Naples is the quiet little town of Sorren- 
to, sleeping cozily by the sea, with high mountains back of 
it, and groves of orange and lemon trees scattered all about 
it ; and while you were freezing in the cold, slush, and snow 
of a New-York winter, we were sitting under the trees, eat- 
ing the freshly-picked oranges, and listening to the songs of 
God's feathered warblers. 

But all is not summer even here ; for old Vesuvius, though 
but a short distance from Sorrento, is white on three sides 
with the snow that his fires can not melt, hot as they are. 
Nothing but the great fire that warms all the earth melts 
snow on the mountains. 

CEMETERY AND BURIAL. 

A cemetery in Italy is called a " Campo Santo." The 
principal one of Naples is some three miles from the centre 
of the city, beautifully located on high ground, embellished 
with elegant private " burial-houses," making a part of it look 
like a pretty village ; the houses varying in size, shape, and 
style of finish, most of them looking like cozy little cottages. 
These are erected by "burial societies," The graves are 
above the surface of the ground. On the side of the build- 
ings opposite the graves (which are in gravel) are horizontal 
niches, or places for coffins, in which the remains of the dead 
are placed after the bodies have lain a year in the graves. 

In another part of this cemetery are the pits in which 
people are buried whose friends can not pay for graves else- 
where. Here the bodies are thrown pell-mell, without the 
presence of friends or relatives, the servants of the place and 



Cemetery and Burial. 149 

the resident priest being the only " mourners " on such occa- 
sions. 

Many interments take place in the evening j and while 
there, we entered one of the small burial-houses, in which 
some half-dozen monks were burying one of their dead 
brothers by candlelight; the body, draped in the grayish- 
brown cowl and hood of his order, was in a rough, unplaned 
box. His brothers kindly raised the top of the box to show 
us the body, which, with folded hands and crucifix on bosom, 
was sleeping as quietly as if in a rosewood coffin. 

Below us lay the city of Naples, its countless lamps gleam- 
ing like myriads of fire-flies on a summer's evening. In front 
of us was Vesuvius ; from its summit great clouds of reddish 
smoke were ascending, and down its sides a dozen streams of 
red lava were rushing toward the sea, on whose restless 
waves the moon was casting the silvery light that nowhere 
seems so soft and glorious as in these regions : leaving the 
monks to bury their dead brother, we rode back to our 
hotel. 



XVII. 

Rome and its Wonders — The Colosseum — Churches — Students 
— Priests — Bishops — Bones — Worshiping — Church 
of St. Peter — Statue of St. Peter — Ruins — Springs of 
Water. 

Rome, Feb. 1868. 

Ruins to-day mark the seat of old Rome's wonderful 
power ; and such ruins ! Read about them, talk of them 
much as one may, they must be seen to be comprehended ; 
indeed, seeing is hardly enough ; they must be studied and 
studied, and gazed upon time after time, till, as in experiments 
in chemistry, or discoveries in astronomy, light breaks upon 
the gazer, and their immensity is realized, comprehended, 
appreciated. 

Here is the Colosseum. Many of our New- York dwelling- 
houses are twenty feet wide, and average, perhaps, forty feet 
in depth. Three hundred such houses, with alleys between, 
could stand on the ground covered by the ruins of the great 
amphitheatre. Place three of your four-story houses on top 
of each other, and the roof of the topmost one would not be' 
higher from the ground than is the top of the outer wall of 
this pile that has been laughing at Time for eighteen centu- 
ries. Close packing and hard squeezing will put about four 
thousand people into the great hall of Cooper Institute, if 
all the aisles and lobbies are filled. More than twenty times 
four thousand persons could be seated in the Colosseum. 
Great care is taken to preserve it as it is ; for an old super- 



Ruins of Rome. 151 

stition proclaims the downfall of Rome with the downfall of 
the Colosseum. Our first visit to it was on a bright day; and 
as we roamed about its six acres of walls and arches, the 
birds were singing merrily in the warm sunshine, seeming to 
bid us of the New World welcome. Our next visit was by 
moonlight ; and as we passed along the corridors, and under 
the firm old arches, torch in hand, the owls, whose premises 
were thus rudely invaded, hoarsely screeched their notes for 
our departure. As the pale light of the moon shone on the 
crumbling seats, it seemed as if the shadowy forms of those 
who once filled them were again in their places \ and as we 
emerged beyond the outer wall, the far-off hooting of the 
angry owls sounded like the dying groans of a gladiator, 
who had fought his last battle in the old arena. 

The Forum, with its broken columns, the Pantheon, obe- 
lisks, Cesarean palaces, baths, pagan temples, the tomb- 
lined Appian Way, are all wonderful. So are the Catacombs, 
and the remains of the old aqueducts ; and very remarkable 
are the great detached masses of cemented brick-work seen 
outside the walls of the city, standing all alone, hundreds of 
yards from any building or arch or structure of any kind, 
looking as if they had been broken from some great temple- 
wall, or other huge buildings larger and greater than any now 
known, resembling, as they loom up from the smooth plain, 
enormous, solid towers, grass -wreathed and bush-crowned. 

Old Rome, the city of the children of the she-wolfs suck- 
lings, contains more of those children's work than I can 
describe ; more even than I have time to see. 

Let old Rome sleep. 

What of the Rome of to-day ? 

Churches ; churches once pagan temples ; churches never 
entered by pagan foot; churches rough and ugly without, 
beautiful and gorgeous within ; churches for show, churches 



152 Papers from over the Water. 

for worship ; churches that count their ages by centuries ; 
churches of this century, and of each century down, down 
the stairs of Time, almost to the first steps taken by Chris- 
tianity on old Time's endless staircase; churches of the 
pigmy age, and churches of the time of giants ; churches 
under-ground, and churches so far above ground that their 
great domes kiss the clouds, and greet the rising sun long 
before sleepy devotees know of his coming ; churches cold, 
dark, and gloomy; churches warm, light, and cheerful; 
churches guarded by dead apostles and saints in marble, and 
churches watched by living cripples and beggars in rags; 
churches from whose walls early Christians were driven by 
their pagan builders; churches within whose walls later 
Christians can not worship ; churches here, churches there, 
everywhere. Of these, and such as these, is the Rome of 
to-day. 

Students — embryo priests — in white, students in black, 
students in blue, students in purple, students in scarlet, 
march up and down its streets, in pairs, in dozens, in scores, 
in hundreds; monks, priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, 
Pope. Pope in chair on men's shoulders ; cardinals in scar- 
let-trimmed coaches, and cardinals on foot in scarlet cloaks 
— their hands kissed by the people — each one followed by 
two serving-men in cocked hats and knee-breeches; arch- 
bishops and bishops in plain coaches, and without coaches ; 
priests single, and priests in couples, dozens, scores ; monks 
in cowl, hood, rope-girdled, and sandal-shod; fat monks 
and lean ones; dirty monks and monks not clean; old 
priests, snuff-taking, sedate, hobbling on weak legs, gray- 
haired, and age-bent; young priests, smoking, chatting, 
laughing, strong-limbed and upright of carriage ; all — stu- 
dents, monks, priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, Pope 
— all moving up and down, in and out, as busily and 



Ruins of Rome. 153 

earnestly as if the great world could not exist without them. 
Of these, and such as these, is the Rome of to-day. 

Formal ceremony, and ceremonious formality ; ceremoni- 
als for plain dress, and ceremonials for state dress ; pomp, eti- 
quette, pageants, shows, processions, feast-days and fast- 
days, high-days and holidays, carnivals, chauntings, masses ; 
robes rich and robes plain ; incense, crucifixes and crucifixions 
in marble and on canvas ; music, music of instruments, mu- 
sic of men, and music of human beings neither men nor wo- 
men ; music that transports the listener from earth to heaven, 
music that bids the listener " depart " to the realms of woe ; 
superstitious awe and awful superstition ; reverence ; piety, 
genuine and fictitious ; veneration ; papal blessings on things 
animate and inanimate \ anathemas ; allocutions-papal, and 
papal bulls; propagandists, pilgrims, missionaries; respect 
for authority, and restlessness under authority ; pride of anti- 
quity ; belief in miracles ; faith in saintly intercessions ; ap- 
peals to the Virgin Mother of God; penances, tributes; 
burning candles, and candles blessed for burning ; vows, 
veil-takings and veil-wearings ; bead-tellings ; worshipings ; 
miracle-working images, and images made by miracles; 
the participants in all which are mixed and mixing, 
moved and moving, waiting, hoping, praying, fearing, march- 
ing, working, idling, believing, doubting, trusting. All, all 
passing up and down life's highway, to paradise or purga- 
tory. Of these, and such as these, is the Rome of to-day. 

On a hill overlooking the city is a small temple on the spot 
where St. Peter was crucified, head downward. In this tem- 
ple is a dry well, from which sand or earth is taken, and 
given in infinitesimal portions to all who want it. I can show 
a spoonful of it. 

As constant dropping wears a stone, so constant dipping 
out of this well exhausts the supply ; and replenishing must 



154 Papers from over the Water. 

follow, or the temple would be undermined. No matter; 
sand taken from under the temple to-day is taken from the 
spot on which the sturdy old apostle died. 

Under a church of the Capuchin monks is a large, well- 
lighted room, in which are the bones of six thousand broth- 
ers of that order, arranged in an artistic manner on shelves, 
in festoons, in wreaths, in chandeliers, in flower-baskets, in 
vases, in balances ; and to add to the beauties of the scene, 
dozens of skeletons, clothed in the cowl and hood worn by 
the order, sit or recline gracefully on the shelves, with bones 
for beds, bones for pillows, bones for reflection, bones facing 
their eyeless sockets, bones under and over their grinning 
jaws, bones for their skeleton fingers to grasp — bones, bones, 
nothing but bones, under them, and over them, and all 
around them ; and there they sit, waiting for the sound of 
the trumpet that shall wake them to life again. Of these, 
and such as these, is the Rome of to-day. 

In a dark, stone-walled and stone-roofed dungeon under 
an old church — a dungeon from which mortal man never 
escaped ; a dungeon in which many a brave old Roman was 
starved and murdered; a dungeon that makes the visitor 
sigh for air and light — is a stone pillar to which St. Peter was 
chained. In front of this, but a few feet from it, is a 
spring of water which miraculously gushed forth to enable 
the imprisoned apostle to baptize the jailer, whom his pray- 
ers and preaching had converted from Paganism to Chris- 
tianity. That spring is not yet dry. 

Some three hundred years have come and gone, since an 
old man, bending under the weight of more than " threescore 
years and ten," vexed at hearing the Romans of that time 
boast of the old Pantheon as a thing of wonder, told them 
he would build a church so large that he could put a Pan- 
theon on its top, which should be so high from the ground 



Ruins of Rome. 155 

that its lowest stone should be higher than the highest of the 
Pantheon ; and, to-day, Angelo's dome, on the great church 
of St. Peter's, tells the world how well the old man kept his 
word — tells of a higher and greater faith than men had learn- 
ed when the old Pantheon was new ; and now the mighty 
structure, crowned by the Pantheon of the Christian, stands, 
with its walls so thick, and the space they inclose so great, 
that the temperature within never varies ; symbolical of the 
universality and equalizing influence of the faith it teaches, a 
great monument of a great man's genius to the Great Father. 

As there was but one Peter among the apostles, so there 
is but one St. Peter's amongst the world's churches. Since 
the late political troubles of the papacy, no visitor is allowed 
in the dome, for fear — so it is said — that some revolutionist 
may place the flag of Italy on its top. Neither are visitors 
allowed in the crypt, for fear — so it is said — that some revo- 
lutionist may blow up the church. 

The Vatican is known as the residence of the Pope. 
True, the holy father occupies a few of its forty-five hundred 
rooms, and only a few. Many of the remainder are used 
for public purposes ; but the great feature of the Vatican — 
that which makes it famous the world over — is its immense 
collection of ancient sculpture, its great library, wonderful 
paintings, and unrivaled museum. Of these, and such as 
these, is the Rome of to-day. 

In the church of St. Peter's there is a large bronze statue 
of that saint sitting in a marble chair. His right foot ex- 
tends out to the edge of the base on which it rests. Devotees 
have kissed this foot, and pressed their foreheads on it so 
much, that the great toe is worn away almost to the first 
joint. To one unused to such things, it seems strange to 
see old men, whose backs are so bent with age that they 
can barely get their lips and foreheads high enough to reach 



156 Papers from over the Water, 

the saint's toe, come tremblingly up, cane in hand, take theii 
coat-sleeves to wipe off whatever the last worshiper may- 
have left on the foot, and, with an effort, raise their tottering 
old heads up, and reverently kiss the toe, and tenderly lay 
their wrinkled foreheads on it. 

Strange is it to us of Protestant America to see mothers 
lead their little ones up to the place where the bronze figure 
sits, kiss and press the toe themselves, and then touch the sin- 
less lips of childhood to the cold metal — honest homage of 
honest hearts. Strange to us, who think we worship ideas, 
and pay but little heed to the physical types thereof, is it to 
see stalwart soldiers, booted, and spurred, with their swords 
clattering over the marble floor, march up to the old saint's 
statue, cross themselves, kneel on the hard, cold marble, re- 
peat their prayers, rise up and kiss the foot as lovingly as 
ever youth kissed maiden. Of these, and such as these, is 
the Rome of to-day. 

In another church are the chains with which St. Peter was 
bound in Jerusalem. They are shown only on special oc- 
casions, and as we happened to visit the church at the 
right time, we were favored with a sight of them. They 
are looked upon with great reverence by the people; 
and as the officiating priest presents the loosened end to 
them, the other end being fastened in a bronze taberna- 
cle, all — men, women, soldiers, priests, students, children — 
all press forward to kiss the rusty links that once bound the 
body of their great saint. 

I have but little faith in forms and ceremonies; don't 
think the kissing of bronze toes or fleshly ones, of any great 
consequence ; don't imagine there is much piety to be con- 
ducted, like electricity, from a rusty chain, to those who touch 
it ; and most certainly I am not one of those who sneer at such 
things, as many of our people here do ; and, while I do not 



Ruins of Rome. 157 

practice these ceremonies, I can sympathize with the feeling of 
reverence, of awe, of love, of piety, that prompts those who do. 
It is of such material that the early apostles and martyrs of 
our faith were made; of such stuff were formed the later 
apostles and martyrs who have carried the great doctrines of 
religious freedom over so much of the earth \ a feeling not 
to be sneered at in Jew or Gentile, in Christian or Pagan, 
in Papist or Protestant. 

The streets of Rome are well paved with small, square 
blocks of stone — smaller, and better laid, than our Belgian ; 
are destitute of sidewalks, and prolific of dirt j full of licensed 
beggars, with brass badges on their breasts, like those worn 
by the licensed porters of New-York, given over to squads 
of armed patrolmen after nightfall. There one sees many fine 
carriage-horses, with their hind-feet bare of shoes, and fore- 
feet only three-quarters shod ; great buildings, made of ma- 
terial from older and greater ones ; artists of the present, that 
live by copying artists of the past. Of these, and such as 
these, is the Rome of to-day. 

At this season of the year, the climate of Rome is very 
agreeable; the atmosphere perfectly transparent, clear, 
charming ; the sky a lovely blue, and almost cloudless. The 
country around the city is magnificent ; the land as soft and 
mellow as ashes, easy of tillage, and very fertile. 

In the winter, Rome is a great rendezvous for American 
" Society " people ; for those who hold receptions, and those 
who attend them ; for balls, flirtations, calls, and all the ten 
thousand follies that make up our watering-place life at Sara- 
toga, and Newport, and Long Branch. Fifth Avenue tries 
to outshine Madison Avenue ; Murray Hill looks down with 
contempt on people from elsewhere ; up-town belles set up 
their pretty noses at the young men from below Madison 
Square ; and for Americans traveling in Europe not to visit 



158 Papers from ever the Water. 

Rome in the winter, and go into " society," is to be unfash- 
ionable at home. 

Each age has its follies, and ours, it is safe to say, has its 
share. 

Greenbacks buy gold ; gold buys pleasure, or that which 
passes for it; and so the wheels of Time roll on in Europe, in 
America, in the old world and in the new. 



XVIII. 

A Good Rule — Sunday Labor — Leghorn — Lucca — Pistoia — 
Bologna — Its Campo Santo — Old Schools and Female 
Professors — Venice — Its Canals — Bridges — Gondolas 
— Churches — Pigeons — Carnival — Square of St. Mark 
— Lotteries — Water Ca?'riers, etc. — A Dangerous Key 
— Plains of Lombardy — Railway Station — Milan — Its 
Great Cathedral — Da Vinci's Last Supper, etc., etc. 

Milan, Italy, March, 1868. 

In the passengers' rooms at the railway station in Rome, 
there is a printed notice to the effect that, inasmuch as the 
employees of the railway derive their support from the public, 
the public are entitled to and must receive from said em- 
ployees civil treatment ; a notice that is not only printed, 
but enforced, and its spirit might be beneficially copied at 
home. 

We left the city of imperial ruins on a bright Sunday 
morning for Leghorn, passing the fortified and garrisoned 
town of Civita Vecchia, the seaport town of Rome, through 
a poor country, though capable in spots of supporting large 
flocks of sheep. As we were passing through the dominions 
of the Pope, a territory exclusively under the control, ab- 
solute and imperative, of the head of the Church, we were 
somewhat surprised at seeing large gangs of men at work on 
the railway. However, I suppose it was all right. 

Leghorn, a nice, clean-looking city, has several handsome 



160 Papers from over the Water. 

squares ; the streets are paved with cut stone, are clean, and its 
people appeared busy. Lady readers will remember this as 
the place where the famous Leghorn bonnets are made. 

LUCCA. 

From Leghorn to Lucca, passing the old city of Pisa and 
getting a last view of the leaning tower, we traverse a garden- 
like region, under high cultivation, and charming in appear- 
ance, even at this season, when the trees and vines are bare 
of leaves. Much of the route between Leghorn and Venice, 
on either side of the Apennine Mountains, is over luxuriant 
plains ; the fields are skirted by trees, from which the vines 
hang in festoons; isolated farm-houses are seen in every 
direction, many of them with barns attached, making the 
whole look perfectly charming. Lucca (the first place in 
Italy to produce and manufacture silk) is one of those quiet, 
old Italian cities that seem to have retired from active life 
and gone into a state of animated vegetation. A ride 
around the town on its immensely strong ramparts is a very 
pleasant thing; and the country seen therefrom is such as 
can't be seen every day by the traveler. 

PISTOIA. 

Between Lucca and Pistoia (the birthplace of the pistol) 
we saw several women in the fields spinning flax while watch- 
ing flocks of sheep. Nothing like industry ; and the women 
in Europe practice that virtue much more than the men. 
Pistoia is another old town wherein the people seem to do 
nothing but breathe, and gaze at the few strangers that 
chance to wander about its narrow* streets. 

After leaving Pistoia, we crossed a spur of the Apennines, 
passing through forty-five tunnels in a five hours' ride, going 
up and down some very heavy grades, so heavy that a 
powerful locomotive could barely move a very light train. 



Female Doctors. 161 

BOLOGNA. 

As we neared Bologna, the ground was white with snow ; 
and on entering the city, we found snow-piles in the streets 
from four to eight feet high, the snow being thrown out of 
the centres of the streets and piled up next to the sidewalks, 
making the streets look very like those in New- York, after 
the railroad tracks are cleared. 

Bologna is a fine old city ; its streets are paved with small 
cobble stone ; its high sidewalks are covered by corridors or 
arcades, made by the houses extending to the carriage-way, 
and resting on heavy arches; it contains ninety thousand 
people, and has one hundred churches. 

PALACE OF THE DEAD. 

The city has one of the most extensive and beautiful 
Campo Santos or cemeteries to be found in Italy, a large, 
roomy, well-arranged, and really grand palace of the dead. 
It embraces an extensive range of buildings, covering several 
acres, divided into corridors, halls and rooms, in such a man- 
ner as to be ornamental, and the interments are so managed 
as not to be injurious to the living. 

Leading from the city to one of the suburban churches is 
a covered gallery or passage-way three miles in length, the 
roof of which is supported by four hundred and twenty-seven 
arches. 

In the Library of Bologna is the portrait of one of its 
former librarians, a man that could converse in, read and 
write, more than one hundred languages and dialects. 

FEMALE DOCTORS. 

The friends of Female Doctors may be pleased to be 
reminded that women were educated for the learned profes- 



1 62 Papers from over the Water. 

sions in the great schools of Bologna hundreds of years ago. 
The daughter of one of their most renowned professors 
often filled her father's place in the lecture-room; and 
younger readers may be pleased to know that this lady was 
not only learned, but also very pretty, so pretty that she 
always stood behind a screen when lecturing, that the stu- 
dents might not be attracted more by her beauty than by 
the subject she discussed. 

The schools of Bologna can not be ridiculed by those 
who oppose the education of women as physicians, for they 
were the best the world had ever known ; they were the 
first to practice dissections of the human body, now ac- 
knowledged to be one of the greatest steps toward a proper 
knowledge of the machine that is so " wonderfully and 
fearfully made;" here also galvanism was discovered. 
These famous schools not only made Doctors in Medicine 
of women, but also Doctors in Law, besides creating them 
professors in all the higher branches of college learning. So 
you see that female doctors are not a modern innovation. 

VENICE. 

Venice, the rusty bride of the Adriatic, is approached by 
a bridge over two miles in length, built of brick and stone, 
laid on piles, of which over eighty thousand were required. 
It rests on two hundred and twenty-two arches, each of thir- 
ty-three feet span ; is twenty-nine feet wide. Twenty-one 
millions of bricks, and more than 200,000 cubic feet of cut 
stone, were used in its construction ; and a thousand men 
worked on it over four years. The water under it is from 
three to thirteen feet deep. 

VENICE ON ISLANDS. 

Few cities have had more said and written about them 
than Venice. Poets, historians, playwrights, and letter-wri- 



Canals and Streets of Venice. 163 

ters have made the world familiar with it ; but perhaps there 
may be some persons that would like to be reminded that 
the famous old city stands on over seventy islands, that lay 
scattered about in the waters of a great lagoon. 

Why the founders of a city should have selected a lot of 
sandy, marshy islands to have built it on, in preference to 
the main-land, is more than I can understand, even though 
the books tell us that it was to get out of the way of enemies ; 
but why the aforesaid enemies could not get to the city as 
well as those who built it passes my comprehension ; how- 
ever, in spite of, or rather some time before, my questioning 
the wisdom of the locality, a city was founded on those sandy, 
marshy islands, which in time became one of the great cities of 
the world, and its men have for ages been recognized as 
among the famous ones that have made the history of the 
race. 

The buildings having been erected on islands, the water 
courses between them became canals ; they serve for high- 
ways around the islands, while the interiors or centres are cut 
up and divided into lanes, alleys, and streets, with occasion- 
ally a sprinkling of open squares, some large enough for a 
garden, and some almost large enough for a very small 
" hen-ery." 

CANALS AND STREETS OF VENICE. 

Many people suppose that there are no streets in Venice ; 
this is a mistake; as I have stated above, the interiors of 
these seventy odd islands have more or less streets, if pas- 
sages three feet wide can be called streets. 

To get around these islands on the canals referred to, over 
three thousand gondolas, queer looking, black, fancifully- 
shaped boats, find employment ; and to get from island to 
island, more than three hundred bridges have been made of 



164 Papers from over the Water. 

stone and brick, among them the " Rialto," where in old 
Shylock's day merchants most did congregate. 

OLD BRIDGES AND PALACES. 

Many of these bridges have stood for centuries ; some of 
them look as if they could last for ages to come, while 
others have already needed the aid of props to hold them 
up ; and the same may be said of many of the finest build- 
ings in the city, including some of the gorgeous old church- 
es, of which Venice has several. Many of the buildings 
have two fronts, one on a little street, and one on a canal, 
that on the canal often being the most imposing; in fact, 
some of the grandest palaces in Venice have their best 
fronts on the canals ; especially is this true of those on the 
Grand Canal. 

SQUARE OF ST. MARK. 

The great feature of Venice is the Square of St. Mark, a 
fine open space of some six hundred feet in length and 
nearly three hundred in width, paved with flat stones and 
surrounded by beautiful buildings, among them the wonder- 
ful Cathedral of St. Mark, in which the Saint's remains now 
rest. In one corner of the square, the great Bell Tower 
rises over three hundred and twenty feet, bearing on the 
top an angelic weathercock, measuring thirty feet between 
the crown of his head and the soles of his feet. 

CARNIVAL. 

The Square of St. Mark is the most picturesque place of the 
kind I have seen, especially in the evening, during the Carni- 
val season, at which time it is a perfect little ocean of human 
fantastics, queer costumes, fine music, masked dancers, mask- 
ed promenaders, gay "banners, colored lights, clowns and 
gentleman, nabobs and beggars, and all the odds and ends 
that Venetian fun and Italian fancy can suggest, not omitting 



Sunday Lotteries. 165 

scores of men and boys selling pumpkin-seeds, which the 
people eat as they do nuts, candy, and fruit ; indeed, pumpkin- 
seeds seemed to be the most popular article of street con- 
sumption. 

IMITATION PRIESTS. 

Among the maskers were a group of young men, dressed 
like priests, marching about, prayer-book in hand, looking 
as demure as genuine members of the cloth ; wherever they 
went a great crowd gathered about them, evidently pleased 
at seeing the broad-brimmed, black-robed fraternity cari- 
catured; for in these days the priests of Italy are not so 
popular and powerful as they once were. 

SUNDAY LOTTERIES. 

Another phase of Venetian life is seen in the Square of St. 
Mark on a Sunday afternoon, when the whole space is filled 
with people to witness the drawing of a lottery. 

At the end of the square nearest to, and in front of the 
Church of St. Mark, a temporary tower, about twelve feet 
square and twenty in height, is erected, in which the draw- 
ing takes place; and as the numbers entitled to prizes are 
drawn, they are reported on each of the four sides of the 
tower, so that all the people in sight may see what they are; 
and to let persons beyond the square also know, a number of 
men are stationed at convenient points in the vicinity, who 
proclaim as loudly as they can bawl the numbers of the 
lucky tickets; by the use of this shouting telegraph, the 
whole city knows each number as soon as drawn. Old men 
and young women, boys and girls, well-dressed and shabby, 
all flock to the square to see the drawing, all interested, all 
excited ; hundreds with paper and pencil in hand recording 
the number of each lucky ticket as announced. The high- 
est prize drawn at the time we were present was fifteen hun- 



1 66 Papers from over the Water. 

dred francs, or three hundred dollars ; the lucky holder was 
a poor sewing girl, who fell into a fainting fit on learning of 
her fortune ! After the drawing was over, a band of musi- 
cians march to the girl's residence, playing all sorts of lively 
airs on the way. 

That is one sort of Sunday amusement in Venice. In 
the evening, the great square was again filled with fantas- 
tic masqueraders, all orderly and civil. The crowds of 
promenaders and amusement seekers in these continental 
cities are always civil, orderly, well-behaved, and conduct 
themselves in a manner that might be advantageously imi- 
tated by the American Eagle. 

PIGE ON-FEEDING. 

Every day, at two in the afternoon, the bells in the great 
Tower of St. Mark ring out a short, lively peal, at the first 
stroke of which scores of pigeons fly into the square from all 
directions ; in a few minutes, they can be counted by hun- 
dreds and thousands; they come from all parts of the city, 
at the sound of the bell, to get their dinners, for this is the 
general feeding time. The pigeons being held in high re- 
gard by the Venetians, a fund is provided for buying 
their food. It is quite an interesting sight to see them flock 
into the square at the sound of the bell. 

IV A TER-1VORKS. 

Venice being built on sandy, marshy islets, surrounded by 
salt water, wells can not be depended on, though water of 
an inferior quality is obtained from artesian wells, and some 
rain-water is saved in cisterns ; but the principal supply of 
water for drinking and cooking is brought in boats some 
thirty miles, by the city, placed in cisterns or vats, filtered 
and doled out in limited quantities to each family without 



Water- Carriers. 167 

cost ; but if more than the fixed quantity is used, it must be 
paid for. 

Many families club together, transport their own supplies 
of water independent of the city, and store it in their own cis- 
terns. The quantity allowed each family would surprise 
New-Yorkers, who use and waste so much of the glorious 
Croton. Suppose you could get only six common-sized 
pailsful of water per day, say forty to fifty quarts ; that is 
about the quantity allowed a family. If more is wanted, it 
must be paid for ; and to see that each family is kept within 
the fixed quantity, a municipal officer is stationed at the wells 
to enforce the rule. 

This quantity probably suffices for most families, as these 
people drink very little water, all drinking wine, the com- 
mon sorts of which are very cheap : for laundry purposes 
they manage to save a little rain water ; while the water from 
the canals is good enough for bathing. 

WA TER-CARRIERS, 

The water is carried into the houses by female " Water- 
Carriers," good, stout girls, with felt hats, red cheeks, and 
no hoops. It is conveyed in small copper pails, holding 
eight or ten quarts each, which are carried on a stick placed 
on the right shoulder, a pail hanging at each end of the 
stick ; the streets being so narrow that the yoke or stick can 
not be worn across the shoulders, as one sees sap car- 
ried in those parts of our country where we make maple su- 
gar, or as foot-peddlers of kerosene in our city carry their 
merchandise. 

QUIET STREETS. 

Sleepy people in Venice are not disturbed by the noise of 
horses and vehicles in the streets, for there are none to be 
seen or heard, not even a donkey ; though I was told that in 



1 68 Papers from over the Water. 

one of the outskirts of the city there were about a dozen 
horses kept for the saddle. 

The carrying is all done in boats or by porters ; and the 
only wheeled vehicles seen are the wheelbarrows used by the 
street-sweepers for removing sweepings. The streets and 
squares are all paved with flat dressed stone, and are kept 
very clean, — an easy job where there are no horses. 

To one accustomed to seeing streets filled with horses and 
vehicles, the entire absence of them is very noticeable. 

A POISONING KEY. 

In the arsenal museum there is a closet filled with instru- 
ments of murder and torture, among them a key so arranged 
as to throw poisoned needles into the hand of one using it. 
When the owner of the key wished to get rid of a person, he 
would hand it to him and request him to unlock a certain 
door ; as the unsuspecting victim placed the key in the door, 
a concealed spring forced the poisoned needle into his hand, 
and death ensued. Ingenious people were the tyrants of old 
times ! 

THE CHURCH OF ST. MARK. 

Venice contains several very fine churches, among them 
the Cathedral of St. Mark, one of the most elaborately orna- 
mented churches in Italy, a perfect museum of rich marbles 
and elegant mosaics ; the floor or pavement is of tessellated 
marble of the most beautiful design and colors, though it is 
now from age and the nature of the foundation on which it 
rests very uneven, and getting into a very bad condition. 

There are few churches in Europe containing more fine 
work than can be found in this old, dark, dingy, dusty, church, 
whose interior is spoiled by scores of gloomy passage-ways 
and miserable, crooked little corridors, dismal chapels, and 
unpleasant rookeries of all sorts and sizes. Among the ob- 



The Cathedral of Milan. 169 

jects of veneration in the cathedral is a granite slab, upon 
which Christ stood when he preached to the people of Tyre ; 
a small piece of his garment ; some earth once moistened 
with his blood; part of the stone pillar to which he was 
bound ; a piece of the cross on which he died ; a lock of 
hair from the head of the Virgin ; a ring worn by St. Mark ; 
and the skull of St. Philip ! 

PLAINS OF LOMBARD V. 

From Venice to Milan, over the historic plains of Lom- 
bardy, is one hundred and seventy-five miles by rail, the 
whole distance being a perfect garden in fertility and culti- 
vation; the handsomest and most fertile region I ever saw 
in one continuous ride of an equal distance. 

MILAN. 

The railway depot at Milan is a palace in size, royal in ap- 
pearance, large, light, roomy, elegant, and fit for an emperor ; 
and the city is one of those places in which the traveler feels 
at home, and would like to remain for a season — the streets 
are clean, the buildings fine, the public gardens handsome, 
the people polite, civil, busy, with healthy, cheerful faces. Of 
beggars there is a scarcity ; of dwarfs, male and female, a sur- 
plus. 

The streets are admirably paved with very small cobble 
stones, not larger than geese eggs; in the centre of the 
streets are broad flat stones for carriage wheels, with space 
between them for horses ; the sidewalks are on a level with 
the carriage way. 

THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN. 

The cathedral of Milan, externally, is one of the most 
beautiful, if not the most beautiful, in Europe ; but its interior 



170 Papers from over the Water. 

is far behind scores of others in appearance. The guide 
that conducts you about it will tell you that it is second in 
size to St. Peter's at Rome ; but he is not aware of the ex- 
istence of some of the great churches in Spain that are 
larger and more impressive than this of Milan, though in 
external beauty this surpasses all in that old kingdom. 

It is built of white marble, walls, spire, turrets, pinnacles, 
floor, roof and all, all white marble, as are also the seven 
thousand statues that ornament it within and without. 

Five hundred years' labor has so nearly completed it that 
only one hundred and twenty more will be required to make 
it a finished church ! 

To get about on its roof, among the hundreds of needle- 
like pinnacles, any one of them fit for the steeple of a little 
American church, a guide is necessary; and as you roam 
about through the galleries, around the pinnacles, up and 
down long flights of stairs, looking at the people in the 
streets hundreds of feat below you, viewing the city spread 
like a map before you, with the great plain around it, and 
the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland away in the dim 
distance, you become delighted with the grandeur of a scene 
long to be remembered. 

A GORGEOUS TOMB. 

From the roof of marble slabs, marble pinnacles, and mar- 
ble statues, down into the basement, is a journey easier men- 
tioned than made ; but made it must be, or the traveler will 
not see the gorgeous tomb of San Carlo, (the good Charles 
Borromeo,) one of the great saints of Milan. The tomb is 
in an under-ground chapel, octagon in shape; the eight pan- 
els that form its sides, covered with bas reliefs of silver gilt, 
represent scenes in the life of the saint. 

Back of the altar is a massive shrine of silver, the front 



The Carnival in different Cities. 171 

part made to open like the revolving iron shutters on some 
of our New-York buildings ; within this is a magnificent cof- 
fin of silver and rock crystal, through the panels of which 
the visitor can see all there is of the dead saint, enveloped 
in the splendid robes he wore when living. The face, in 
spite of the embalmer's art, is as brown and skull-like as if 
friendly skill had never tried to make it otherwise ; and there 
the dead Charles rests as quietly as if sleeping in a pauper's 
grave, undisturbed by the offerings and prayers of devotees, 
or the curious gaze of traveling sight-seers. 

THE LAST SUPPER. 

In a dingy old room, in a dingy old building attached to 
a dingy old church, high up on a rough plastered wall, is a 
frescoed painting, that has been more written and talked 
about, copied more times, and in more various sizes, styles, 
and modes than any other picture or painting the world has 
ever known ; day by day its magnificent beauties crumble, 
atom by atom the old wall peals off, each atom taking more 
or less of the genius that the world has worshiped for cen- 
turies j little by little " The Last Supper " of Da Vinci is 
passing away into the all-absorbing oblivion that sooner or 
later swallows every thing done by human hands. It can not 
be removed, for it is on common wall plaster ; it can not be 
repainted, for then it would not be Da Vinci's ; and there it 
is, a lessening glory of departed genius. 

THE CARNIVAL IN DIFFERENT CITIES. 

Before leaving Rome, we saw the carnival season inaugu- 
rated by civic and religious dignitaries ; witnessed a horse 
race on the Corso, where the horses run a mile without ri- 
ders, in a street like Broadway ; saw the Romans sprinkle 
each other with little pellets of plaster of Paris, till they 
looked as white as so many millers ; observed that working 



172 Papers from over the Water. 

at carnival time was not allowed in the old city. At Leg- 
horn we saw that working was allowed, and that the people 
seemed to be having a gay time in their carnival. At Ve- 
nice we saw the people masked by the thousands, gay 
dresses and priestly caricatures all the go ; and at Milan we 
saw the whole city turned into a great masquerade, stores 
closed, business suspended, pellets thrown by the bushel — 
bands of music parading the streets, huge cars full of mas- 
queraders ridiculing old Rome, ridiculing the priests, ridi- 
culing Napoleon, laughing at every thing, and frolicking with 
every body — a real jolly, fun-making and fun-enjoying crowd 
of children, girls, boys, women, and men. 



XIX. 

From Milan via the Brenner Pass, Munich, Strasbourg, etc., to 

Paris — Powdered Heads a?id Paces — Stately Policei7ien — 

Verofia — Juliefs House and Tomb — Old Amphitheatre 

— Botzen — Innsbruck — Railway Scenery — Munich — 

Beer — Dead-House — Finger-Rings, Wires, Alarm Bells 

for the Dead — Railway Tickets — Storks 1 Nests, etc., 

etc., etc. 

Paris, March, 1868. 

From Milan, the city that in former times was the maker 

of fashions, as Paris now is ; the city where the fashionable 

ladies of to-day fill their hair and cover their faces with so 

much white powder as to make them look as if just out of a 

meal-bag; the city where stately policemen, enveloped in dark 

coats, with skirts reaching to their feet, their hands encased 

in black gloves, the crowns of their stove-pipe hats covered 

with leather, march with a dignified manner about the streets 

with silver-headed cane-like baton in hand, to Verona — the 

Verona of " Romeo and Juliet " — is some four hours' ride 

over the blood-fertilized plains of Lombardy, passing in sight 

cf the blue waters of Lake Garda, one of the pretty lakes 

that Italy is proud of. 

VERONA. 

The old town of Verona is classed as one of the "strong 
places" of Europe; its fortifications are extensive and of 
great strength. Some of the streets are wide enough for an 
army to manoeuvre in, and some are so narrow that soldiers 
would have to march " Indian file " to get through them. 



174 Papers from over the Water. 

OLD AMPHITHEATRE. 

The amphitheatre, eighteen centuries old, is in an admira- 
ble state of preservation, better than the one at Nimes or 
even the Colosseum, for the reason that in former times cer- 
tain municipal functionaries, when taking office, were compel- 
led to put one block of stone in place of one fallen into decay ; 
by this means the old building has been preserved, and that, 
too, without making a new one, as was the case with the 
Yankee boy's old knife which had been blessed with a new 
blade and handle ; for in the case of the old amphitheatre 
only a small portion of the whole has needed any repairing. 

" Romeo and Juliet," or rather Juliet, is remembered tradi- 
tionally in Verona, by an old house, now used as a cheap tav- 
ern for peasants being shown as the house where she lived, and 
by an old stone wash-trough, or long square tub, shown as 
her tomb. Nobody cares to show any memento of Romeo. 

In front of many shops there may be seen the drollest 
signs imaginable, mostly grotesque images of religious he- 
roes and patron saints. 

Verona has the usual supply of churches that one sees in 
all these Italian cities. 

On our way from Verona to Munich, via the Brenner 
Pass, (4700 feet above the sea,) we visited the old towns of 
Botzen and Innsbruck, curious old German places. 

RAILWAY SCENERY. 

A part of this route through the Austrian and Bavarian 
Tyrol is of a very interesting character. The railway winds 
and twists in a zig-zag fashion up the mountains, leaps over 
rapid streams, dives through dark tunnels, crawls slowly 
along the edge of projecting cliffs, hundreds of feet below 
which little villages ensconce themselves as if afraid of the 
cars. Now, over some small, mellow field where a native 



Innsbruck. 175 

was plowing the soft earth with three pair of oxen to one 
plow, (driver on the off-side of the team,) a job that one 
horse could easily do ; then crossing scores of narrow roads, 
the train almost touching the numerous shrines, nearly all 
containing figures of Christ — scarcely one of the Virgin ; 
over other small, well-tilled fields, where men with clean 
white aprons were spreading manure ; now across a quiet 
little nook of a valley, then around the brow of a mountain 
whose sides and top were covered with snow ; here past a 
stone-quarry, then past great beds of porphyry. 
. Botzen, a town of some business importance, is protected 
from a mountain stream by a stone wall two miles in length 
and nearly twenty-four feet thick. Many of the houses ex- 
tend to the outer edges of the sidewalk, making low, narrow, 
dark arcades, and causing the shops to look gloomy enough. 
Small and very rapid streams of water run through many 
of its narrow streets. 

INNSBRUCK. 

Innsbruck is a larger town than Botzen. In an old church 
there is one of the most exquisitely wrought marble monu- 
ments in the Old World. The sides are covered with twen- 
ty-four bos reliefs, or I may say, marble pictures in relief, 
done in the most perfectly wonderful manner, many of the 
pictures equaling in beauty the best cameos of ancient or 
modern times. 

The portraits in marble on some of these tablets, though 
very small — almost small enough to be worn as personal or- 
naments — are so perfect as to be easily and instantly recog- 
nized by their resemblance to the historical portraits hanging 
in the great galleries of Europe. 

The twenty-four tablets embrace historical incidents in the 
career of one of the Maximilians, such as battles, sieges, sur- 
renders, marriages, etc. 



176 Papers from over the Water. 

This monument is surrounded (it stands in the centre of 
the church) by twenty-eight bronze figures, fully as large as 
life, of kings, emperors, and other bygones — queer looking 
old chaps, loaded down with all sorts of uncouth implements 
of war. 

MUNICH. 

Leaving the old town of Innsbruck, we journeyed on to 
Munich, the capital of Bavaria, famous for its art galleries 
and beer-drinking. Munich, or, as its people spell it, " Miin- 
chen," is quite a pretty city, with many fine streets, kept 
clean by women, who also saw and split fire-wood. The 
sidewalks are well covered by handsome military officers, 
whose long white overcoats reach down to their boot-heels, 
and by continuous processions of men and women, boys and 
girls, carrying empty beer mugs to, and full ones from, the 
breweries and beer-shops. Beer-drinking appears to be 
a very popular branch of trade in Munich. 

Letter-writers have written so much. about the art matters 
of Munich that nothing is left for me to write. As a matter 
of course I went up into the head and looked out of the eyes 
of the great bronze statue of Bavaria, a huge female figure, 
sixty-one feet from the crown of its head to the soles of its 
feet. 

The funeral pageant of the dead ex-king was on a small 
scale, much smaller than some of the huge breweries he used 
to visit when living, much smaller and less impressive than 
the grand picture galleries he established, and which have 
made Munich all it is in the world of art. 

A DEAD-HOUSE. 

Adjoining the cemetery, whose graves know no difference 
between papist and protestant, there is a large well-lighted 
and well- ventilated " dead-house," in which every corpse 



Finger- Rings on the Dead. 177 

brought for interment in the cemetery is laid and kept a 
certain time before it is removed to its last resting-place. 

The bodies are placed on inclined tables, decked in such 
clothing as purse will allow or taste suggest, flowers in all 
cases being used in great profusion. 

When we were there, some twenty bodies were waiting 
interment. 

All ages were represented, from the youngest of infants to 
the oldest of men. Some looked as fresh as if pain and 
death had left them untouched. Others " grinned horribly 
forth the ghastly smile " that painters give to the grim old 
king whose summons all humanity has to obey. 

FINGER-EINGS ON THE DEAD. 

On one finger of each corpse, a ring is placed. To this 
ring a wire is attached that leads to the office of the watch- 
man, and at the office end of this wire there is a bell — all 
being so perfectly adjusted that the slightest movement of 
the deceased person's finger will ring the bell ; even the con- 
traction of muscles that sometimes follows death has been 
known to ring the bell. 

This ring, wire, and bell are used for the prevention of 
premature burials, as it is related that some person was once 
buried alive in Munich ; and to prevent the occurrence of 
such a horrid fate, the above precautions have been taken 
for many years. It is a singular sight to see so many 
deceased persons lying together in a large, well-lighted room, 
covered with flowers, each one with the ring and wire 
attached to a finger. 

The bronze foundery at Munich turns out much of the 
largest and best of modern bronze work, some of which has 
found its way to our own country ; the bronze doors of the 
Capitol at Washington were wrought therein. 



178 Papers from over the Water. 

Would our readers like a bedstead that required forty- 
persons fifteen years to finish ? Such a one is in an old 
palace in Munich. 

Sleep is no sweeter on such a bedstead than on the cot of 
the poorest man, whose tired body needs no tinsel wherewith 
to coax slumber. 

TO PARIS. 

From Munich to Paris, via Augsburg, Ulm, Stuttgart, 
Strasbourg, and Nancy, is a pleasant trip, notwithstanding 
one has a railway ticket five inches wide and eighteen inches 
long. Paper is cheap in that part of the world. 

Between Munich and Augsburg, most of the country is 
flat and wet, with little good land, though the small white 
houses of the peasants looked clean and comfortable. 

In the vicinity of Ulm, the land is good and well culti- 
vated, though many of the orchards of fruit-trees were sadly 
in need of the pruning knife and of something that would 
remove the yellow moss which covered most of the trees. 

The hill-sides were terraced to their very summits, and 
covered with vines. At convenient distances, stone steps 
led from the valleys, in straight lines, up to their summits, 
some of these stairways being hundreds of feet from bottom 
to top. 

Strasbourg is a fine old city, whose tall, sharp-gabled 
houses with windows in their roofs give it a singular ap- 
pearance. In the spring of the year, the storks come from 
Egypt and build their nests on the tops of the chimneys 
there to raise their young. 

From the roof of the Great Cathedral, one may see 
hundreds of these African sojourners safely at work, building 
their nests on the tall chimney-tops. 

The spire of the Cathedral of Strasbourg is said to be the 
tallest in Europe. 



To Paris. 179 

The danger of ascending to its top is so great, from the 
open character of its architecture, that the ascent above 
a certain point is prohibited. Several lives have been lost in 
the attempt. 

From Strasbourg to Nancy, the country is generally very 
fine and highly cultivated, some portions of the route are 
really charming. Nancy is one of the prettiest little cities 
in France ; has broad, well-paved, clean streets, pretty little 
squares, fine public buildings, and comfortable-looking 
dwellings. A few hours by rail takes the traveler from 
Nancy to Paris, city of boulevards, cafe's, shops, soldiers, 
emperors, and revolutions. 



XX. 

Sewers of Paris — Babies and Nurses — Bologne — Bank Bills 
for Waste Paper — A Small Bill for a Large Sum — Bal- 
let-Dancers — Heads — Royal Consumers — Asses' 1 Milk — 
Beef Paw and Roasted — Fish, etc., etc. 

London, May, 1868. 
The great sewers of Paris are worth visiting ; at any rate, 
large parties of ladies and gentlemen think so, and take great 
pains to get permission to go through them. We were a part 
of a large company, mostly Americans, that assembled one 
fine April day near the Church of the Madeleine, to take our 
turn for an excursion under the streets of the great city. 

A RIDE UNDERGROUND. 

After a short delay, the heavy iron door was raised ; we 
passed down a flight of steps, and found ourselves in one of 
the great sewers that helps to make Paris tolerably healthy. 
Polite, uniformed ofhcials helped us into boats, and away we 
went, towed by men pulling like horses on a canal tow-path. 

Our party was so large that several boats were required. 

After a short boating experience, we were transferred to 
railway cars, so constructed as to run directly over the canal 
part or water-course of the sewers, while between the sides 
of the canal and the walls of the sewer there were narrow 
sidewalks on which men passed to and fro, including those 
who propelled the cars. 

The great sewers are not like the little brick canals we 
make in New- York for the drainage of our dirty city, but 



Gardens and Babies. 181 

large, roomy, airy, underground avenues, from fifteen to 
twenty feet wide, and from seven to ten feet high, well sup- 
plied with gas lamps, and entirely free from the close, sick- 
ening atmosphere that finds its way out of our New- York 
sewers when opened. 

Securely placed on huge iron brackets made fast to the 
solid stone sides of these sewers are monster iron pipes for 
the conveyance of water throughout the city and where the 
water and wash of the streets find its way down into the 
canals of the main sewers, it comes down over stone steps, 
like broken cascades, not in one compact mass, as it does 
into the inlets of our New- York sewers. 

After nearly two hours' ride in the sewers by boat and car, 
we emerged above ground, near the old tower of St. 
Jacques. 

GARDENS AND BABIES. 

From the sewers underneath to the garden of the Tuile- 
ries on the surface, from underground gaslight to above- 
ground sunlight, is an agreeable change. On any pleasant 
day in spring-time, one may see in the Parisian gardens and 
squares more of infantile humanity than elsewhere. At one 
glance, acres of babies, and thousands of nurses — old nurses 
and young ones, pretty nurses and plain ones, good-natured 
ones and crusty ones, wet nurses and dry ones, fat nurses 
and lean ones — all, old, young, pretty and ugly, fat and lean, 
wet and dry, all wearing black dresses, clean white caps, and 
cleaner white aprons ; and as to the " babies," ay, the ba- 
bies, that is another matter entirely. 

A person may attempt a description of the nurses ; they 
are grown up, and, no longer children, are nobody's darlings ; 
but the babies are not grown up, are somebody's darlings, 
somebody's pets, and must not be spoken lightly of, not they ; 
are they not the pets of pas, the delights of mas, the hopes 



182 Papers from over the Water. 

of grandpas, the only comforts of aunts, the pride of cousins ? 
Their red cheeks and bright eyes, and toddling, waddling 
gaits must be praised; if they tumble over, they must be 
helped up and made to laugh ; no tear-drop must be allowed 
to furrow their smooth faces ; pa may smile, ma may laugh, 
grandpa may chuckle with glee, aunts may take comfort, 
cousins may be proud, while these thousands of budding 
humanities caper and laugh and gambol under the old trees 
whose young leaves are budding with more promise of a 
mature hereafter than the human buds under their branches, 
thousands of whom will never reach the sere and yellow leaf 
of matured humanity. Out of these Parisian gardens and 
squares but few children are seen, but in them the little dar- 
lings can be counted by the thousand. ' 

BOULOGNE. 

From Paris to Boulogne is some six hours by the northern 
railway, through, for a part of the way, very fine country. 

Boulogne " by the sea " is not a very interesting place to 
the traveler leaving France, especially if the wind is so strong 
as to prevent the departure of the steamer for England 
though the female fish-dealers with their short dresses, red 
cheeks, and huge ear-rings of gold and silver, give the place 
rather a peculiar appearance. 

The fish trade of the town is very considerable, as it is one 
of the principal depots for the catch of the North Sea, and 
the market for the sale of the scaly merchandise is worth 
visiting. 

One portion of the city is inhabited by the families of the 
fishermen ; and the making of new, the repairing and drying 
of old fish-nets, is carried on in every house, and in the 
narrow streets. 

TO LONDON. 

After waiting, impatiently, two days for the wind to die 
away, we left the shores of La Belle France for the home of 



Bank-Notes . 183 

John Bull, and on landing at Folkestone, went on shore in 
a genuine English rain, took seats in the cars, and flew away 
to London, the great home of smoke, and noise, and bustle, 
and Hansoms, and omnibuses, and railways, over house-tops, 
and railways under the house cellars. 

I shall not tire the reader with a description of London, 
as I do not know enough about it to make any such attempt, 
though I could not well avoid noticing a few things as being 
somewhat different from things at home. The poor people 
looked much poorer and more downcast than with us, 
notwithstanding their long soap-locks were well greased 
Of an evening, some of the principal streets were alive with 
unfortunate females, whose importunities were not confined to 
mere words, but strong hands would be laid on the male tra- 
veler, and very urgent physical efforts made to force him along. 

This class of persons were more numerous, and more 
decided in plying their dreadful trade, than I ever saw 
elsewhere. 

Gin-shops (patronized by male and female) are almost as 
abundant as in New-York, but not quite. 

BANK-NOTES. 

In the rooms of the bank of England, one can see more 
tons of waste paper in the shape of canceled bank-notes, 
waiting its turn for burning, than can be found in any old 
paper warehouse in America. 

It is piled up in stacks ; and not only counts its weight by 
thousands and thousands of pounds avoirdupois, but also 
foots up its millions and millions of pounds sterling, once 
good for tons of gold and silver. 

The bank never puts out a note more than once. When 
it comes back to the bank, it is kept, and the coin or another 
note is issued in its place. 



184 Papers from over the Water. 

Every day these returned notes are sorted, marked, dated, 
bundled, and laid away, and, after being kept a certain time, 
are destroyed. 

A very few old notes are shown as curiosities ; one, for a 
large amount, was out of the bank for one hundred years 
before it was returned for redemption, and one — the only one 
ever issued — for one million of pounds sterling, say over 
seven millions of dollars in greenbacks, was a little, soiled, 
ragged piece of brownish paper, in appearance scarcely fit for 
a cigar-lighter. 

Piles of gold and hills of silver are abundant in the bank 
of England. 

Compared with the ballet-dancers of Milan, those of Lon- 
don have the advantage, in weight, firmness of step, solidity 
of underpinning, and strength. 

The contrast between the heads of English ladies, as seen 
in the theatres, and those of the ladies of Spain and Italy, 
as seen in the theatres of those countries, is very striking, the 
former being much the largest, and giving decidedly greater 
indications of intellect and all that denotes brain. 

, The people of London, as seen in the streets and public 
places, have a ruddy, healthy look, and seem to feel pretty 
well. 

ROYAL CONSUMERS. 

The royal family must be enormous consumers of all sorts 
of commodities ; for a great proportion of the shops tell the 
public that they are purveyors to, or are patronized by, that 
family. Clothiers, hatters, shoers, grocers, bakers, hosiers, 
and every other branch of trade conduce to the supply of 
the Queen's household ; not omitting one shop, where a big 
sign proclaims that a " Purveyor of asses' milk to the 
Royal Family," is a business worth following. Sneering 
philosophers have intimated that this sort of aliment has had 



Fish. 185 

its effect on the juvenile branches of the royal house- 
hold. 

London parks are fine, horses ditto, carriages heavy, 
servants well liveried, streets pretty well paved, and some of 
them more crowded than Broadway. 

Members of Parliament do not look well with their hats on 
while in session; that is, to the eyes of their American visit- 
ors, but neither " Lords " nor " Commons " care for that. 

BEEF. 

A morning visit to Covent Garden Market will enable the 
visitor to see about as much beef as can be seen elsewhere in 
the same space. 

Beef to the right, to the left, in front; fattened and 
slaughtered, tallowed and dressed ; up lanes and down alleys, 
through streets and across avenues; lined and walled and 
flanked, and bastioned and turreted with beef, huge quarters 
thereof being lugged in and out, up and down, by stout 
porters with cheeks as red as the beef they carry. Beef here, 
there, everywhere ; fat and lean, heavy and light. 

English roast beef is entitled to its good reputation ; so is 
English mutton ; but good beefsteaks are counted with those 
things that a few weeks' sojourn in Britain did not enable us 
to find, though we made daily search therefor in the best 
hotels. English beer is good, and not dear. 

FISH. 

Leaving meat and beer, we took a morning stroll to 
Billingsgate Fish Market, passing Newgate Prison. Here 
one can see fish enough to supply the world with its Friday's 
dinner ; big fish and little ones ; fish with scales and fish with- 
out scales ; shell-fish and shell-less fish ; crawling fish and 
flying fish ; salt fish and fresh ones ; fish by weight, fish by 
count, and fish by measure ; and all the streets, lanes, and 



1 86 Papers from over the Water. 

alleys in the neighborhood so blocked up with hawkers and 
peddlers on foot, and with horse-wagons and donkey-carts, 
as to require the skill of an expert gymnast to work one's way 
through them. 

STRENGTH. 

Our New- York builders might, with safety to the public, 
copy the style and strength of the scaffoldings used by their 
British cousins in the erection of new buildings, scaffolds, 
and stagings. 

John Bull does not build very fast, but he builds very 
strong and safe ; and this may be said of all the Old World 
that I have seen. 

As John Bright walks about the rooms of the Reform 
Club, chatting, with hands in trousers' pockets, he reminds one 
of Senator Wilson, by his freedom from starched-up pom- 
posity, his perfectly natural, common sense way of talking, 
and the ease that he makes all feel in his presence. No hum- 
bug in either of these men. They mean what they say, say 
what they mean, and do both. 



XXI. 

England — Scotland — Ireland — Leamington — Stratford — 
Chatsworth — Sheffield — Edinburgh — Glasgow — Liver- 
pool — Dublin — Killarney — Colorless-faced poor people, 
etc., etc. 

Cork, Ireland, May, 1868. 
From London to Leamington, passing the collegiate city 
of Oxford, scudding past scores of brick-yards, whirling 
through green fields, rushing over and under highways, stop- 
ping here and there to take up and set down odd parcels of 
human freight, then on, past beautiful hedges, in sight of the 
grand old parks and lawns that make English landscapes 
so beautiful, looking at hundreds of great sheep, so round 
and heavy with flesh and wool that when they lie down they 
find it difficult to get up, sometimes rolling over on their 
broad backs with feet in the air, and waiting until the watchful 
shepherd comes to their rescue ; such a day's ride on an 
English railway in fine weather is very pleasant. 

LEAMINGTON. 

Leamington is one of England's Saratogas, only a deal 
prettier and more inviting than any of ours, especially in its 
surroundings, the country about it being perfectly charming, 
much more so than the vicinity of any of our American 
watering places. 

Adjoining one of the principal hotels, in the heart of the 
town, is a small space of ground covered with trees, in the 
tops of which the rooks, birds that look enough like our 
crows to be at least first-cousins, were building their nests, 



1 88 Papers from over the Water. 

and making a tremendous noise with their cawing and scold- 
ing. Their cousins, American crows, do not keep house in 
town. 

OLD CASTLES— STRATFORD. 

The tourist who stops at Leamington is bound to visit those 
old historic places, Warwick and Kenilworth Castles, pass- 
ing through some of those beautiful parks of which the gen- 
uine Englishman is justly so proud ; and of course he must 
go to that other place, still more famous than any old castle 
England boasts of — a place that will be known as long as hu- 
manity recognizes genius and pays homage to the owners of 
brains — the place in which the great Poet of the race was born, 
Stratford-on-Avon, a quiet, sleepy little village, which might 
have lived as long as the island on which it stands, and 
never have been heard of beyond the limits of its own shire, 
but for its being the birthplace of the bard. 

The country about Stratford is as handsome as any one 
could desire — charming. 

PLEASANT CHATSWORTH. 

Chatsworth, the seat of a duke, is said to be one of the 
finest in England ; whether it is or not, it is quite grand and 
beautiful ; the hundreds of deer strolling about look con- 
tented enough to make the traveler teel envious, and the lit- 
tle hotel on the duke's estate is so clean and comfortable 
that the traveler wishes for plenty of time for the enjoyment 
of its pleasures. 

SHEFFIELD. 

Two hours' ride from Chatsworth, by good roads over the 
moors, brings the tourist to the smoke-blackened city of 
Sheffield, famous for its cutlery manufactures. 

Strolling about its streets for a short time, while waiting 
for the train northward, we noticed large numbers of idle 
men standing about in groups, so many of them as to excite 



Smoke — Coal — Iron . 189 

our curiosity ; and on asking one if they were on a strike for 
higher wages, he replied in a tone and manner showing that 
he was no striker, " No, sir, no, indeed ; we are not on a 
strike ; we are out of work ; trade is dull ; none of us have 
work except a few ' grinders,' (alluding to those who ground 
the cutlery;) all the rest of us have had no work for weeks, 
and God only knows when we will have any." 

These men looked very poor, thin in flesh, and had those 
colorless faces I noticed in the poor of London, and which 
I afterward observed in the poor of Glasgow ; their whole 
appearance indicated extreme want and deep dejection. 

The old church at York, known as the " Minster," is quite 
an imposing edifice ; but after one has seen the principal ca- 
thedrals on the Continent, much of the interest in such things 
is lost. 

The country about York is not so fine as about Stratford, 
Leamington, Warwick Castle, etc. 

SMOKE— CO A L—IRON. 

On the way to Melrose, in whose abbey graveyard the 
tombstones tell the former business of the dead occupants, 
we passed in sight of Newcastle-on-T^ne, another smoke- 
covered city; in fact this whole trip from London to Edin- 
burgh is made in sight of towns blackened with smoke; one- 
is never out of sight of railway trains loaded with coal, and 
coke, and iron; furnace-chimneys are seen in every direction, 
throwing up tall sheets of flame and great clouds of smoke 
night and day. The trip is a sort of panorama of green 
fields, smoky towns, fine lawns, great trees, big sheep, pretty 
hedges, railways and railway trains burdened with iron, and 
coal, and coke ; the atmosphere in the vicinity of the towns 
and furnaces is completely darkened with great volumes of 
smoke. 



190 Papers from over the Water. 

EDINBURGH. 

Edinburgh is a very interesting city to visit; but so much 
has been written about it, and so many of our people have 
seen it, that I shall not weary the reader with long stories 
concerning it. I was not pleased to see that Scotland's 
aristocratic novelist had a much more costly monument in a 
much more prominent place than has Scotland's democratic 
poet. The future Scotland will remedy this. 

When the people are recognized as greater than castes or 
institutions, then the poets of the people will occupy the 
niches and places their worth and genius entitle them to ; 
in the mean time, Burns can live in the hearts of the mil- 
lion. 

The Botanic Gardens of " Auld Reekie " might be advan- 
tageously imitated by young Gotham. 

GLASGOW. 

Glasgow is a busy place ; and the banks of the Clyde, thence 
to Dumbarton, give abundant evidence that iron steamers are 
still demanded by that imperious king of the present, Com- 
merce. 

£ Glasgow showed us more drunken persons of both sexes, 
more dirty, barefooted women, more pale-faced people, more 
daylight prostitutes, than any other place of its size I ever 
saw; but, over and above those dark spots, the city and peo- 
ple give evidence of such better institutions as trade and 
manufactures carry in their train. 

The mountains and lakes seen about the region of Lo- 
mond and Katrine are very beautiful ; but to be properly ap- 
preciated, one ought to see them before visiting Switzerland, 
whose chief wealth consists in the beauty of her lakes and 
the grandeur of her mountains. 



Dublin, 191 

LIVERPOOL. 

Liverpool is another busy place, though it does not contain 
much to interest a traveler already surfeited with sight- 
seeing. A large open space near the Town Hall is, on a 
Sunday afternoon, filled with groups of men, discussing all 
sorts of topics in a quiet and orderly manner, quite as order- 
ly as are some of the sittings of the Italian Parliament at 
Florence. 

Some of these parties were discussing religious topics, in- 
cluding, of course, the Irish Church question; others talked 
on political matters ; others listened very earnestly to some 
zealous missionary or street-preacher — all observing the 
utmost decorum, and the rival disputants would listen to 
each other with as much patience as if each had an allotted 
time to speak. 

There must have been several hundreds thus engaged 
when we were present, the groups varying from a dozen or 
so about the debaters, up to as great a number as could 
hear what was said, the two or three policemen standing on 
the outskirts of the crowd having nothing to do but look on. 

From Liverpool to Holyhead is a pleasant railway ride, 
passing the old city of Chester, cutting across a bit of Wales, 
through the celebrated tubular bridge that Englishmen con- 
sider such a wonder, going at a very high rate of speed for 
two hours without stop, giving the engine water while under 
headway; then by steamer over to Dublin completes one 
day's work. 

DUBLIN. 

Dublin is a fine city; has several very pretty greens, 
(parks,) streets in tolerably good order, and shopkeepers too 
lazy to commence trade early in the morning. 

From Dublin to the Lakes of Killarney, a traveler sees 
thousands and thousands of acres of land that seem to be 



192 Papers from over the Water. 

suffering for the occupants that once tilled them ; the tum- 
ble-down cabins give evidence that thrift is unknown within 
their doors ; while the broken fences and untrimmed hedges 
speak eloquently of absent workers. 

KILLARNEY. 

The Lakes of Killarney, the Gap of Dunloe, with their 
legends, surroundings, old castles, magnificent deer parks, 
etc., are very beautiful and interesting; but not so beautiful 
or interesting is the appearance of the poorer classes seen on 
the highway and in the little town of Killarney — people 
that look as if hope had left them forever. 

The laboring classes of Ireland have great respect for 
America, every neighborhood and almost every family having 
contributed additions to our census. 

Asking an old man at work near O'Connell's monument, 
in the cemetery at Dublin, if he would give a lady from 
America a sprig of holly from a bush near his work, he re- 
plied, " Yes, indade, and welcome," and wished that he had 
something else to give ; " for," said he, " America is the Irish- 
man's home, and all Americans are welcome in Ireland." 

An old man who had been showing visitors about the 
ruins of a castle near Killarney for forty years had several 
children in America ; two of his sons had joined a Massa- 
chusetts regiment during the war; in fact, every one you 
talk with in Ireland has a relative or friend in America. 

From Killarney to Cork and Queenstown is the last rail- 
way trip the homeward-bound American makes ; on arriving 
at the end of the iron road, he takes a steamer and is rolled 
and tossed, and steamed and blown across the Atlantic, to 
meet those whose faces speak of former times, and mingle 
in scenes he can not live away from. ■ 



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XXII. 

Scraps— Comparisons. 

Perhaps the reader may be interested in a few items con- 
cerning matters not often referred to by travelers, mere trifles 
may be, but nevertheless noticeable. 

SIGNS. 

In Paris, and some other cities, dealers in jewelry made 
of materials that resemble gold and silver (but are neither) 
are required to put the word " imitation" in such conspicuous 
places in their windows and shops as to be seen by all who 
enter ; and that word is seen in some of the finest looking 
shops on the continent. 

This regulation is for the protection of the public ; other- 
wise the ignorant might pay as much for imitation articles as 
the genuine would bring. If this law prevailed in America, 
dealers in " cheap jewelry" would not get the high prices 
they now obtain. 

A certain clothing store in Paris is known by the name of 
the " Good Devil," and the sign over its door has a full- 
length portrait of his Diabolical Excellency painted thereon. 
Another store is known as the " Little Jesus." On one side 
of a street is a shoe store called the " Two Sisters." Across 
the street is another one called the " Two Brothers." A 
certain dry goods store is known as the " Little St. Thomas." 
Another one, as the " Good Market." 

Nowhere did I see such large, fine signs over business 
places as are seen in American cities. In Florence, and some 



194 Papers from over the Water. 

other Southern towns, most of the business signs were really 
small and insignificant. While on the Continent, we did 
not see a coffin warehouse, or any place where coffins were kept 
for sale ; in fact, did not see one, except at funerals. Neither 
will a traveler see a " barber's pole." The sign for a barber's 
shop is a small metal dish, about the size and shape of a large 
soup-dish, with a piece clipped out of one side of the rim. 

Parisian barbers have quite a reputation as hair-dressers, 
but as hair-cutters they are far behind the craft in New-York ; 
indeed, European barbers are not as expert either with 
scissors or razors as the barbers in America, and their shops 
bear no comparison with ours, in size or fittings. A luxuri- 
ous barber shop, such as we have, is unknown in Europe. 

RAILWAYS. 

The railways of the old world are much more firmly con- 
structed than ours; the road beds are often well ballasted 
with gravel or broken stone, the masonry very durable; the 
bridges strong and heavy, always of stone, brick, or iron, 
never of wood ; the car-wheels of greater diameter than ours : 
the driver or engineer stands exposed to the weather, without 
roof or shelter. 

The cars differ from ours in being divided into small com- 
partments, each holding six to eight persons, and are entered 
at the side instead of at the ends. A train sometimes con- 
sists of three classes of cars, the difference being in the 
exterior appearance and interior finishing; the first-class are 
luxurious, the second comfortable, and the third are neither. 

The compartments are so small that there is no room for 
stoves. In cold weather, passengers are warmed by metal 
tubes, filled with hot water, which are covered with carpet 
or felt, and placed on the floor of the car. In ordinary cold 
weather, this hot water keeps the car comfortable. 



Railways. 195 

At the highway crossings, where the railway does not go 
over or under the highways, as it generally does, guards are 
stationed, or gates are hung, to protect the highway travelers 
from passing trains. When a train approaches a stopping 
place, speed is slackened a long way off, and, instead of 
rushing up to the station at the top of its speed, and stop- 
ping so suddenly as to send the passengers off their seats — 
American fashion — headway is slackened so imperceptibly 
that a full stop is reached without jar. 

In leaving a station, the train moves very slowly at first ; 
no snorting and screaming of engine ; no jerking and twitch- 
ing of cars and shaking up of passengers. A train moves 
off as carefully as if the human freight inside was worth pre- 
serving. When a train reaches a station, the passengers 
leaving pass from the landing place by one door, and those 
intending to take the train enter at another ; no hustling, 
crowding, and jamming between the outgoers and incomers 
on car platforms and in car doors. No person is allowed 
to walk on a railway track anywhere ; and in many places 
where passengers are obliged to cross the track at a station 
to take a train, bridges are provided for that purpose. 

On some railways, passengers pay for all their luggage ; on 
others, a certain weight is allowed each passenger, and the 
excess only is charged for, no matter how little such excess 
may be, sometimes amounting to only a few cents. On all 
the Continental railways, each passenger's luggage is 
weighed, and a printed receipt given therefor ; the American 
system of checking baggage, and delivery by express men, 
is not known abroad. 

On the Continent, railways seldom enter or pass through 
a town, the station always being far away from the centre or 
densely populated portion. Such a thing as a train rushing 
at high speed into and through a city, as in America, is a 



196 Papers from over the Water. 

thing not practiced in the Old World. There, corporations 
are ruled by the governments for the protection of the people. 

HIGHWA YS— BRIDGES. 

In the countries herein referred to, highways are much 
better than with us. Were they otherwise, it would speak 
but poorly for the progress of the race; there, experience, 
cheap labor, and abundance of capital, dense population, 
have made the roads and bridges as good as need be, and as 
durable as the elements will allow. 

Highway bridges, like the railway bridges, are made of 
stone, or brick, or iron, wooden bridges being almost 
unknown : in fact, I did not see one. 

It is not an uncommon sight to see a bridge that has stood 
a thousand years ; and the traveler often crosses those built in 
the palmy days of old Rome. 

FORESTS. 

Much of France, nearly all of Spain, and large portions of 
Italy, are entirely destitute of forests. The tourist can travel 
day after day in these countries without seeing standing 
timber enough to make a decent-sized barn. The people in 
these sections are bothered to get the very little fuel they 
need, depending upon the trimmings of shade and fruit 
trees, vines, etc., for what they get ; whilst the damage done 
to the country by heavy rains is beyond estimate, especially 
in the hilly regions, where the rain, falling on the ground, 
finding no trees with their wide-spreading roots to check its 
passage off the surface, rushes with* tremendous force into 
the valleys, carrying all before it. So destructive are these 
torrents, and so sudden do they come down the river beds, 
that in many places heavy stone walls are erected to keep 
the sweeping floods within bounds. Within a few hours 



Public Safety. 197 

after one of these torrents has swept down a valley, the bed 
of the river will be as dry as if water had never wet it. 

Another evil is found in the scarcity of small running 
streams for the use of cattle, and for manufacturing pur- 
poses. 

The unchecked rain, finding nothing in its way, hastily 
passes from the surface and gets to the sea; whereas, if the 
land was sprinkled with forests, much of it would be absorbed 
by the ground, and by gradual percolation find its way to the 
streams, and keep them alive to aid in the work of man, and 
give drink to animals. 

I earnestly implore the owners of forests in our favored 
land to be careful of the trees, and waste none. We can 
leave our successors no better legacy. 

PUBLIC SAFETY. 

There seems to be more regard paid to public safety in 
Europe than in America ; that is, in guarding life and public 
convenience against carelessness. This is seen in the sepa- 
rated ingress and egress of passengers at railway stations j in 
crossing over and prohibition of walking on railway tracks ; in 
the care exercised at railway crossings, as referred to 
herein ; in the strength of the stagings and scaffoldings used 
in the erection or repair of buildings ; in the strength of 
bridges, etc. 

In Paris, when the front of a house is being cleaned, 
painted, or repaired, persons on foot are not allowed to pass 
on the sidewalk before it, for fear of some accident befalling 
them from the carelessness of the workmen ; and this is true 
in regard to new buildings. The sidewalk is fenced in, so 
that the passer-by shall not be endangered by any thing fall- 
ing from the staging overhead ; whilst the street in front is 
not, only in a very small degree, blocked up with building 



198 Papers from over the Water. 

materials, the rule seeming to be, in all cases, that the con- 
venience of one individual must be secondary to that of the 
community. 

French omnibuses are not allowed to carry more passen- 
gers than they can seat. 

When a bus is full, a sign is put on the top stating that 
fact; and until some one gets out, no one can get in. 

One result of this is, that those who pay for seats have 
them, without carrying others on their laps, or having their 
toes trod on by standing trespassers. Another result is, 
that more omnibuses are put on the routes than would be if 
the American system of crowding and packing was adopted. 

Our New- York practice of lining the sides of streets with 
vehicles not in present use does not prevail over the water. 

When a cart or carriage is not in service, has no team 
before it ready for use, it is taken out of the street and dis- 
posed of in private places, just as the horses are, or as furni- 
ture is ; no barricading of public highways with idle private 
vehicles. 

The adoption of this system would make the streets of 
New-York much more easy for transit, and add greatly to 
their appearance. 

CITIES. 

No city visited during our tour seemed to be so busy as 
New- York. Although Paris has twice, and London three 
times its population, neither of them seemed so active, so 
busy, so lively as New- York; the people did not seem 
in such a hurry ; there, the street crowds move along leisure- 
ly, as if they had but httle to do and plenty of time to do it ; 
while our people move as if they had a great deal to do, and 
but a short time in which to do it. Many of the Old World 
cities have more vehicles for pleasure than we of New- York, 
Paris having over eleven thousand licensed public carriages, 



Cities. 199 

beside other thousands of private unlicensed ones ; yet nei- 
ther Paris nor London seem to have so many vehicles for 
business and work as New- York ; neither did it seem as if 
the work-carts in those cities were scattered over so much of 
their surfaces as they are in New- York, though in certain 
spots in London the street-traffic was greater, and the thor- 
oughfares more crowded than any of ours. 

The licensed carriage system of the Old World appears 
better than ours ; more care is exercised for the protection 
of the passenger than with us. 

In Paris and other continental cities, as soon as a passen- 
ger is seated in a carriage, the driver gives him a printed 
card containing the rates of fare he has to pay. A failure 
to do this subjects the driver to a legal penalty. 

The rates of fare are usually lower than with us. The 
public carriages are generally comfortable, but the horses are 
not so good as ours ; the drivers are usually civil. In addi- 
tion to their regular legal fare, they always expect a gratuity 
from the passenger. A failure to comply with this expecta- 
tion sometimes changes civility to gross rudeness. 

New- York excels European cities in the activity of its peo- 
ple, in its business energies, in the filth of its miserably-paved 
streets, in the great size and beauty of its stores, its conve- 
nient, luxurious private dwelling-houses, its unrivaled Fifth 
Avenue, a street without a peer, whether viewed architectur- 
ally, or as giving evidence of wealth and taste ; and no street 
in any city we visited can, at any hour of any day, make 
such a magnificent display as this does every fine Sunday 
at mid-day ; then more well-dressed men, more richly-clad, 
handsome women, can be seen than on any other two miles 
of street we ever saw. 

Fifth Avenue in its Sunday garb is not our only showy 
street, so far as the number and appearance of its promena- 



200 Papers from over the Water. 

ders is concerned ; for Broadway from Bleecker to Twenty- 
third street can, on any pleasant day, display more gayly- 
dressed, pretty women than can be seen on any street we 
saw abroad ; and though I can not indorse all that is claimed 
for our national bird, yet I am constrained to say that the 
lady promenaders in our American cities are much better 
looking than those seen in the streets of European cities. 

LA NDLORDS—HO TEL CLERKS— WAITERS. 

American hotel-keepers are to most hotel-guests a sort 
of myth, a kind of demi-god, to be seen by but few and ap- 
proached by none ; while their " gentlemanly clerks " are 
pinks of stuck-up, starched, self-inflated, hair-frizzled speci- 
mens of the tailor's skill in ornamenting brainless bipeds, 
whose principal duties seem to consist in keeping the newly- 
arrived guest waiting their leisure for assignment to some 
seven-by-jnine room in a sky-parlor. 

European landlords receive their guests as friends making 
a personal visit ; are civil, polite, attentive, and their clerks 
are employed to serve the guests of the hotel, not to snub 
them with cold neglect or colder rudeness ; whilst the waiters 
and other servants treat guests as though they felt an interest 
in their comfort. Possibly this may arise from a prospective 
gratuity at the guest's departure, though such is also expect- 
ed in America; but that does not insure as much civility and 
attention here as there. 

On a guest's departure, landlord, clerk, etc., wait upon 
the traveller to his carriage, and with a polite bow wish him 
a pleasant journey. American haste, American activity, 
and press of business no doubt prevent this sort of atten- 
tion, but need not preclude civil treatment and polite atten- 
tion on the part of the landlord and attaches while the 
guests remain. 



Parks — Foimtai?is. 201 

We have some approachable landlords, some polite hotel- 
clerks, and attentive waiters, but there is room for and need 
of more. 

Waiters at foreign restaurants, wine-shops and the like, 
always expect a gratuity from the customer, no matter how 
little has been ordered j when the guest leaves, he is expected 
to give the waiter something, even if served by the land- 
lord in person. A very little will answer, but the more the 
better. At all eating-houses, every guest is presented with 
a regular bill of all he has had, a piece of circumlocutory 
detail that the patrons of American eating-houses have nei- 
ther time nor inclination to wait for, a useless practice that 
none but slow people could tolerate. Fast America can 
not wait. 

PA RKS—FO UNTA INS. 

European cities are often better supplied with parks, pub- 
lic gardens, and squares, than are our American cities ; and 
most of them have an abundance of statues and other 
works of art. Some have great shade-trees, little lakes, etc., 
but none that I visited excel or equal our Central Park in 
the variety of scenery, in artistic arrangement, in splendid 
views of land and water, in the elegance of carriages, 
horses, and the beauty of the magnificently dressed women 
that fill its splendid drives on fine days. 

Rotten Row, in Hyde Park, London, may turn out 
heavier style in the matter of huge carriages, heavy as our 
New-York cartmen's trucks ; in a greater weight and orna- 
mentation of harness, and big-legged, big-wigged, and 
powdered coachmen, footmen, etc. ; and one portion of the 
Bois de Boulogne in Paris, where the carriages pass up and 
down, back and forth, like the promenaders in a ball-room, 
may make a grand display of horses, vehicles, and people ; 
yet neither of these, nor the Prado at Madrid, nor the drive 



202 Papers from over the Water. 

along the Arno at Florence, nor the Pincian Hill at Rome, 
excel our Central Park, either in the elegance of the place it- 
self, or in the appearance of those who visit it : and when it is 
sprinkled over with the water-jets and monuments that time 
will bring, it will be far more beautiful than any thing we 
saw abroad. 

The cities and villages of the Old World are usually well 
supplied with public fountains ; about them, one always sees 
the people waiting their turn for a supply of water. In many 
towns of Spain and Italy, the water is carried about by 
donkeys ; and in Venice by stout, healthy-looking girls. 

Some of these fountains are highly ornamented with 
statues, bas-reliefs, etc., and always form a prominent feature 
among the sights. 

The semi-wild birds seen by travelers, such as pigeons, 
crows, and small field birds, are not so shy as with us. 
Crows do not seem to be at all afraid of the passers-by, and 
the pigeons in the streets are as bold as if never molested. 

Evidently the boys of Europe are not so fond of frighten- 
ing the birds as ours, or are not allowed to indulge in such 
boyish sports. Pipes used for distributing gas about build- 
ings, dwellings, etc., are always exposed to view, never 
covered with boards or mortar as with us. Huge placards 
or posters, such as are seen in American cities, are not seen 
in Europe. American advertisers of that sort entirely eclipse 
their brethren on the other side. Such great bills as are used 
by our circus managers would attract more attention than 
the pictures in an art gallery. 

CO URIERS-BA NKERS. 

Travelers often growl about couriers. Perhaps some of 
the bad traits of this class of men may be traced to their em- 
ployers, and may grow out of the treatment they receive. 



Small Matters. 203 

A six months' observation leads me to believe that they 
are as much sinned against as sinning. 

They certainly are a very useful class ; are often men of 
education, some of them speaking nearly all the principal 
languages of Europe, and are men of experience. 

I met one, a black American, who had been a courier over 
twenty years ; had charge of the mother and other female 
relatives of a very prominent New-Yorker, and his party of 
four — two ladies and two young misses — were as well taken 
care of as any party need be. 

The bankers a traveler has to meet are usually polite and 
attentive, and diligent in forwarding correspondence; at least, 
such was my experience. 

During a ten months' trip, my letters and papers from home 
reached me as regularly as the weeks rolled around, not a 
letter being lost. Messrs. John Munroe & Company, of 
Paris, and their various correspondents in the places visited, 
were as prompt in attending to requests about letters, etc., as 
any one would desire. 

SMALL MATTERS. 

Butter is put on the table unsalted ; each person adds salt 
to suit his taste. In many places, the girls and boys that sell 
flowers in the streets fix no price on their fragrant wares. 
The purchaser gives what he chooses. Throwing a bunch 
of flowers into one's carriage is a common practice of these 
dealers in the beautiful. If you do not give them - quite as 
much as you ought, an intimation to that effect is soon given, 
either by following your carriage, or such expression of 
countenance as to be understood, as well as the language of 
the tongue. 

Beggars will sometimes follow a carriage for a mile, even 
if going at a pretty fair pace, sometimes performing queer 



204 Papers from over the Water. 

feats of gymnastics, the young members of that ancient craft 
seeming to be as tireless as dogs. 

At hotels, candles are charged separately ; in fact, all items 
had by the traveler are thus charged. Many travelers make 
a practice of taking the unburned portions of their candles 
with them for future use. When one pays from twenty to 
thirty cents for an indifferent candle, a little economy is not 
considered out of place ; in fact, it is pretty often practiced. 

The waiters are fond of lighting plenty of candles, some- 
times half a dozen in one sleeping-room, all of which are 
charged in the traveler's bills. 

At restaurants, a certain amount of sugar is given to each 
person for coffee and tea. If more is wanted, an extra 
charge is made; if any is unused, the customer takes it or 
leaves it, just as he pleases. 

In some places, hot water is brought into the dining-room 
on live coals, for tea-making, and each one makes his tea to 
suit his taste. 

Judging by the universal, constant sight of people carrying 
bread in the streets, a traveler must believe that our Ameri- 
can practice of bread-making at home does not prevail 
abroad, all seeming to look to the bake-shop for that sort of 
food. In some places, pure milk is obtained by driving 
cows and goats from house to house, and having them 
milked on the premises of the consumer, one cow serving 
several families. 



END. 






61- 79 












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